Overdosing On Russian Culture

by

Mackenzie Patel

 

Hello world travelers! A few nights ago, I was lucky enough to attend the Russian Extravaganza, an event in which a series of pieces by Russian composers was performed by the Florida Orchestra at the Mahaffey Theater. I had never been to a proper symphony before; YouTube was pretty much the only exposure I had to great classical and modern musical works. The Orchestra, composed of talented members that were mostly gray-haired, performed Stravinsky’s Petrushka, Rachmaninoff’s The Isle of the Dead, and Tchaikovsky’s Francesca da Rimini. Needless to say, I felt more cultured in those short two hours than I have in my whole life put together (only the Prado Museum and the Louvre gave the turbulent Russian master’s a run for their rubles). The conductor, the dapper Michael Francis, was energized to the hilt, completely absorbed in his music, and even had an adorable English accent to boot. Especially because I had never attended a live orchestra before, I was enamored with the melodies and let them fill my entire being until I was the music and the music was me.

Stravinsky floored me with his emotionally charged Petrushka; it was hard to believe, what with the tumultuous chords and lilting notes, that Petrushka was just a puppet. The music felt alive and I could see the dramatic events unfold in my mind’s eye. Petrushka dancing with the other puppets, Petrushka falling in love with the dainty ballerina, the pretty dancer fleeing after an affair with the Blackamoor puppet, the climatic stabbing of Petrushka and his falling death. It was marvelous! It was amazing how engaging a spectator can be in these kinds of settings; although I was glued to my red velvet seat, I devoured the priceless expressions on the musicians’ faces and composed a mental story full of rich puppet images in my head. While my mind was entertained and dancing with ecstasy, it was hilarious because my mother was bored and wasn’t aware that symphonies often lasted for half an hour or more. According to the program, “He [Stravinsky] was so pleased with it [Petrushka] that he would not leave it alone, and began persuading me to develop the theme of the puppet’s sufferings and make it into a whole ballet.” Out of the three, this piece was my favorite because of the seemingly absurd (but nonetheless tragic) tale behind it.

The second piece was The Isle of the Dead by the prolific Rachmaninoff. His local haunt was Dresden, Germany, and this work was inspired by a Romantic painting of the same name by Arnold Bӧcklin. In order to fully understand the ebb and flow of the music, one must see the haunting, almost ethereal painting by the Swiss master. Featuring linear Cyprus trees, foreboding white rocks that form a sort of cave, and a man in a brilliant white robe being ferried across a turbulent sea with a boatman and coffin, it is thrilling and utterly bone-chilling. The “mournfully rocking” melody definitely communicates the sense of brooding sea-life that Rachmaninoff wanted the viewer to experience. Even though I was safely inside a beautiful, air-conditioned building, I still felt the brown hairs on my arm stand on end as I thought about the unsettling post and lintel tombs on that desolate island, its occupants forever trapped between the oil and canvas. Bӧcklin completed five versions of the work, each with different patrons (1880 to 1886). The deep hum of the cello and the cry of the clarinet as the unnamed spectator on the boat remembers a past love affair strike deep into the hearts of the audience, bewitching and frightening us. The work ends on a menacing note, and “the island is again cloaked in undisturbed eternal peace….”

The last work, Francesca da Rimini, was completed by Tchaikovsky in 1876 and had my heart thumping wildly all throughout the twenty five minutes or so that it was being performed. I was anxious to hear this piece the most because I have a strange fascination with Tchaikovsky—his Piano Concerto No. 1 is my favorite musical work and his life was so interesting, emotionally violent, and remarkable. The story behind Francesca da Rimini comes from the Divine Comedy by Dante. In the second circle of Hell, Virgil and Dante witness the heart-wrenching fate of Francesca and Paolo, two lovers damned because of their unbridled lust. Francesca was married to Paolo’s older, decrepit, and generally unattractive brother, but the two secretly pined for each other. Finding the two lovers together, the old husband murdered both of them, and they were sent to Hell with other burning heathens such as Helen of Troy, Paris, Tristan, and Isolde. Reflecting the unhappy love situation of his own life, this work was unrelenting, high strung, and almost screaming in a way as the melody was supposed to represent the swirling vortex of Hell (deep stuff, I know). The shriek of the violins as they alternated between piercingly high and sinisterly low tones turned my brain to a violent mush. I felt as if I was caught in the spinning tornado of lust, damned souls yelling and screaming in pain all around me. I can’t begin to imagine what unbalanced state of mind Tchaikovsky must have been in when he wrote the furious piece. The conductor flailed his arms to and fro as he attempted to keep up with the hairsplitting speed and emotion.

Overall, my night experiencing the passion of the Russian composers was enlightening and on edge. Compared to these crazed men, I seem like a balanced and normal teenage girl that doesn’t get that cut up over love or mysterious paintings. The performers in the Florida Orchestra were truly a delight to witness—their skill and obvious enjoyment of their work was evident with every pluck of the string, every blow on the drum, and every bellow of the horn.