Sergei Mikhailovich Eisenstein (1898-1948), artist and intellectual and versatile witness directed the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, turned in 1938, once on Sergei Prokofiev to ask him to compose the music for his film Alexander Nevsky . That first meeting gave professional results so high that Eisenstein could not help but to resort again to Prokofiev to compose the musical score for his most ambitious work: Ivan the Terrible, the monumental film with which he celebrated the epic of the first Tsar of all Russia, lived in the sixteenth century. "Ivan the Terrible" is a gigantic work, which depicts an ancient Russia, but left to launch flares that of Stalin. Unfortunately, the character of Ivan the Terrible told in the film resembles a bit 'too much to Stalin, to the point that they blocked the exit of the second part of the film, also shot and designed to be a unified work, thus preventing that was completed the original project director, who had directing mind of a third party dedicated to winning the maturity of Ivan. And so, though the work had already been completed in 1946, it was not until 1958 - that is, five years after the death of Stalin and Prokofiev and ten from that of Eisenstein - to see the whole opera represented.
Eisenstein had many good reasons to turn to his soundtracks for Prokofiev: his vast experience - from symphonic and piano that chamber dallopera opera and ballet - he had aged in the two qualities, only opposite in appearance, are essential for writing film music: expressive flexibility in adapting to situations and iron discipline in complying with the pace of the succession of images. For the music of 'Alexander Nevsky also had the opportunity to experience a compositional technique has proved very suitable for that purpose, was to create three pieces of material to be used for different needs films. The first block was part of the most musically ambitious material, material which would have had to adapt the screenplay, in order to enhance the full potential of the soundtrack and in second block, script and music were exchanged roles and prominence, so was the music to be written to measure the scene already filmed, and finally, in the third block was part of the stew of small and refrains leit-motif that would be bounced from time to time in sound texture of the film, according to the needs of its director.
As for the 'Alexander Nevsky , the brilliant pair gave full evidence of their mastery, creating a work that still has no equal in this very special ranking combined (mainly due to lack of objective approachable filmmakers to musicians' height of the genius of Prokofiev).
Unfortunately those music Prokofiev had no time and method of treating suites concert or still functional adaptations to their self-representation. To listen to music in concert it was not until 1961, when Abram Stasevich (1907-1974) made an oratory. To represent in a comprehensive manner the complex plot of the film's plot of origin, Stasevich enucleates twenty-six original paintings from the score, connecting them together with shares entrusted to a narrator, which has the task of narrating the scene changes on the basis of written by the same Eisenstein. The giant altarpiece that ensued, while overall commendable, is not always smooth reading, reciting and fatigued by the interventions of the pieces resulting from the Orthodox liturgical tradition, musically interest lower. Thus in 1990 the English musicologist Christopher Palmer oversaw a revival of Prokofiev's work, more agile and free of commentary on the narrator. The thirteen pieces in this version which is organized by the concert were selected and organized with less comprehensive criteria clearly about the plot of the film's origin, but their structures and temporal succession. The forces entrusted with the first recording of this new version, given below, are the same that have sponsored the premiere, which took place in London February 28, 1991: Linda Finnie is the alto, bass-baritone Nikita Storojev , Philharmonia Chorus and Philharmonia Orchestra are entrusted to the care of Neeme Järvi.
1 Overture - Overture, Overture
2 Il mare Russo - Russian Sea - Russian Ocean - La Mer russe;
3 Le nozze - Wedding - The wedding; Noces:
i) Allegro fastoso
ii) Andante
iii) Allegro fastoso
4 L'incendio - Fire - Fire - L'incendie;
5 Tartari e cannonieri - Tartars and Canoneer - The Tartars and the gunners tartare et Canonniers:
i) Allegro moderato;
ii) Moderato energico;
6 Seizure of Kazan - The Storming of Kazan - Die Erstürmung von Kasan - A l'assaut de Kazan
The proposals are clearly scenes from the film source, adapted to the concert version of music that accompanies the long sequence in the film of the siege and fall of the city of Kazan, capital of the Islamic khanate was conquered in August 1552 by troops led by the Tsar Ivan. Fortified by this success came fame as a unifier of Ivan the Russian people and a defender of Christian belief.
7 Ivan's disease - Ivan's Sickness - Iwan auf dem Krankenbett - La maladie d'Ivan
i) Adagio;
ii) Andante sostenuto;
8 At the Polish Court - At the Polish Court - Am polnischen Hof - La cour de Pologne;
9 Anastasia
10 The Song of the Beaver - Song of the Beaver (Ephrosynia's Lullaby) - Lied des bibers (Ephrosynias Wiegenlied) - The chanson du castor (Berceuse d'Ephrosynia)
11 The Banquet - The banquet - Das Festessen - The banquet: i) Allegro well-paced, ferocious ii) Allegro moderato; iii) Allegro well paced.
The "snapshots" proposals refer again to the sequences annotated by the music in the concert version proposed here. In the sequence in black and white actors impersonating Serafina Birman and Pavel Kadochnikov respectively Efrosina Staritskaya and his son Vladimir, who would like the noble boyars as tsar, because of its ineptitude that would facilitate the handling by the latter. Efrosina, Ivan's aunt, she sings a lullaby to his son, indeed, grown-up, which tells of the adventures of the hunter accapararsi the skin of the beaver, the metaphor behind it is even not so secretly done a glimpse of Vladimir the need to search a 'action strength of the solution to their ambitions of power. The next sequence, populated by wild dancing and singing, he clings to the banquet held by Ivan, which - sensed the betrayal - is his cousin Vladimir drunk to make him confess their intentions conspiracy. These, in the throes of a trance induced by alcohol and exceptional charisma enthralling Ivan, let's be put on the royal robes and is about to become a sacrificial victim of the revenge of the Tsar. Amazing stage presence and the magnetism of the protagonist, the actor Nicolai Cherkasov.
12 Murder in the Cathedral - Murder in the Cathedral - Mord in der Kathedrale - Le meurtre dans la cathédrale.
is a significant addition to the score obtained by Palmer Stasevich that, rather inexplicably, has decided not to include in their selection with the background music that Prokofiev has translated into sounds, the concern of Vladimir and the dramatic conclusion of his awkward "coup ". The theme of the lament of the beaver is here taken up and developed by the choir with his mouth closed with a growing disturbing film of great effect, whose peak coincides with the arrival of the mortal blow, by which the killer - unaware of mistaken identity - remains the conspirator to life. I took the original sequence (again, as the banquet scene that precedes it, turn on color film from the war booty seized from the Nazis) that you can still review and "listen" in its link to the original sounds http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALbxsm27ojw
13 Finale (Coda).
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