The Notebook Musical

Shchedrin was born in Moscow into a musical family—his father was a composer and teacher of music theory. He studied at the Moscow Choral School and Moscow Conservatory (graduating in 1955) under Yuri Shaporin (composition) and Yakov Flier (piano). He was married to the well-known ballerina Maya Plisetskaya from 1958 until her death in 2015.

Valery Gavrilin was one of the most colourful and significant Russian composers of the second half of the 20th century. He was only 25 when he composed The Russian Notebook, a ‘poem of love and death’ crafted in a new musical language that doesn’t employ folk melodies but does use folkloric texts, and with a virtuosic vocal part. These stylised tunes are combined with rich melodies to form a haunting cycle heard here in a 2018 orchestration. The ten numbers from the ballet Anyuta are lively, melodious and touchingly beautiful.

It’s impossible to imagine a musical training without Bach, from children’s music academies to conservatories. Bach is here to stay. When I started teaching children in the 1970s, quite a few of my colleagues were making fruitless attempts to (partially) replace Bach with Bartók’s Mikrokosmos. The children, however, had very little if any enthusiasm for Bartók’s music and their teachers eventually had to back down. Bartók, with all due respect, was no match for Bach.