Brezgin, Oleg Sergei Diagilev (review)

Abstract

SEER, 95, 3, JULY 2017 546 Even from the minimal descriptions above, it will be clear that Schnittke was a highly intellectual and widely cultured composer. In the last article, however, by Alexander Ivashkin, we are in the world of belief rather than intellect: both musicians seem to have perceived personal significance in music, not just for references, as found in Beethoven and Shostakovich, to name but two wellknown examples, but in a deeply spiritual, almost mystical, form of symbolism in which music directly linked the composer and the dedicatee. A welcome addition to this thought-provoking and very well illustrated volume is the Appendix, which consists of a revised catalogue of Alfred Schnittke’s sketches held in the Juilliard Manuscript Collection with, in addition to formal detail, clarifying comments for future researchers by Ivana Medić (the compiler). The Bibliography is very full and carefully prepared like the rest of the volume. It is, perhaps, ironical that the only slip noted by the present reviewer in this meticulously prepared collection is the amalgamation of two of Ivashkin’s works about other cellists (Sviatoslav Knushevitsky and Daniel Shapran) in a footnote in the Preface (p. xxi). Dr Dixon is to be congratulated on assembling a strong and varied team for this handsomely produced memorial volume. The complexity of Shnittke’s music and thought are very evident, so that it is principally a book for musicologists rather than the casual general reader, despite the lucidity of much of the writing. The collection makes a major contribution to understanding the fascinating composer to whom Ivashkin devoted so much of his career both as a scholar and as an outstanding performer. London Arnold McMillin Brezgin, Oleg. Sergei Diagilev. Zhizn´ zamechatel´nykh liudei, 1597. Molodaia gvardiia, Moscow, 2016. 640 pp. Illustrations. Short dictionary of names. Chronology. Selected bibliography. R682.00. This extensively researched volume is a welcome contribution to the already considerable literature on Sergei Diagilev, duly listed in the bibliography and used, comparatively and critically throughout. The author’s technique is to allow contemporary voices to speak for themselves, through letters, diaries, memoirs, reviews and gossip columns, voices which clash and contradict one another but, occasionally, movingly harmonize. They recount terrifying money troubles and spiteful gossip, namedrop, scold and enthuse and, occasionally, combine to record moments of achievement and quiet exhilaration. At the centre of it all is the larger-than-life figure of Diagilev, sleeves rolled up to the elbows bespattered with mortar and builder’s dust, as he depicts himself REVIEWS 547 in an early letter to Aleksandr Benois. All his life, Diagilev continued to have a finger in every pie, commissioning ballets then ruthlessly interfering in his composers’ music and artists’ plans for decorations and costume designs, in choreography and performance; he would personally tackle the lighting effects in different theatres during dress rehearsal, then turn up — immaculate, dandified and charming — in the boxes or the par terre on the first night, to face down scandal and, on more than one occasion, riot among the audience, or to murmur sweet nothings in the ears of his fabulously wealthy patrons: the Prince of Monaco, the King of Spain… Perhaps the most precious pages of the book, as so often in biography, are the early chapters about the subject’s childhood (the biographer lives and works in Perm´). Family photographs and archive material, especially the memoirs, correspondence and a hitherto unpublished watercolour by Sergei’s muchloved step-mother, vividly evoke the life of his extended family: the fouryear -old Sergei’s first cultural pilgrimage to Western Europe accompanied by his parents, his infant step-brother in a Moses basket (and the inevitable Russian nanny); the sternly Orthodox grandfather who made a fortune from strong drink and contributed munificently to the building of churches; the ‘Diva’ aunt who took singing lessons in Paris from Turgenev’s beloved Pauline Viardot. Sergei’s father, Pavel, was a military man who loved to sing, for whom performance and music were synonymous with support to local charities and inspired play. His first wife survived Sergei’s birth by only a few weeks. Devastated by his loss, Pavel, nevertheless, soon married again. His second wife provided him and his...