Cadrin, Paul and Downes, Stephen (eds) The Szymanowski Companion (review)

Abstract

SEER, 95, 2, APRIL 2017 356 book, on p. 212.) Indeed, the gushing reports on, for example, the rapidly growing ‘American’ city of Tel-Aviv brought to mind the breathless style of innumerable Soviet novels such as Valentin Kataev’s Vremia vpered — the feeling that time was on the side of those who were building a new and better future, whether for Soviet or for Jewish citizens. Read, for example, Gershon Svet’s private letter of 1935: ‘Tel-Aviv is growing literally by the hour, if not by the minute. Everyone is in a cheerful, happy mood. You rarely meet so many people in a good frame of mind as you do here. Of course, there are whingers as well, but they are mainly losers, who, in Tel-Aviv, look just like their opposite numbers in Riga’ (p. 214; see also pp. 204–09). (Nonetheless, Mr Svet chose to live in Jerusalem.) This future-projected similarity, however superficial, may help to explain the general widespread reluctance of Jews in Palestine and, later, in Israel to be overly critical of the Kremlin (a rare exception, in 1932, is described on pp. 202–03). There was definitely a Russian non-Jewish presence in Palestine, as shown, i.a., by the lectures given in Russian (and interpreted into Hebrew) in 1935 by the Socialist-Revolutionary leader Viktor Chernov (pp. 212–13) and by the 1937 complete translation of Evgenii Onegin by Avraam Shlenskii, born in Ukraine, who also translated Gogol´, Blok, Mandel´shtam and Pasternak into Hebrew (pp. 221–22). Although it would have benefited from a bit more editing by someone with native English, this is a very worthwhile book, and we should be grateful not only to its editors, but also to the editors at Stanford Slavic Studies, for publishing it. Department of Slavonic Studies Martin Dewhirst University of Glasgow Cadrin, Paul and Downes, Stephen (eds). The Szymanowski Companion. Ashgate,FarnhamandBurlington,VT,2015.xxii+301pp.Musicexamples. Tables. Notes. List of works. Chronology. Bibliography. Indexes. £70.00. What do we understand by a musical Companion: a fireside guide for the informed layman, or an academic’s round-up of recent interpretative scholarship? Paul Cadrin and Stephen Downes, editors of The Szymanowski Companion, could hardly be clearer: in the wake of a burgeoning Szymanowski literature involving a number of different interpretative and analytical approaches, their aim is ‘to provide a text that is the first port of call for English readers, both the professional scholar and the musically trained amateur enthusiast’ (p. xvii). The task sounds daunting but their alphabetic layout, dazzling the reader with juxtapositions such as ‘Dance, Death, Dedicatees’ REVIEWS 357 or ‘Piano Music, Politics, Rhythm’, proves practical, and the narrow angle of some of these headings can be fruitful. ‘Dedicatees’, for instance, brings together biographical detail that one would long hunt for elsewhere. Many of the contributors are familiar to the English-speaking Szymanowski enthusiast.TeresaChylińskahasbeenentrustedwithbiographicalinformation; the editors and Alistair Wightman share chapters on analysis and aesthetic issues; and a further, international group of scholars contribute items on specific aspects of Szymanowski’s oeuvre, his writings and travels abroad. There is naturally some overlap, as between the two chapters concerning Szymanowski’s musical and aesthetic debt to Chopin, or between genre-based and analytical chapters centring on the same works. The more musically detailed chapters succeed in illuminating works one thought one knew, in unpretentious analytical language mildly spiced (in the case of Downes’s ‘Sonata Forms’) with references to Hepokoskian sonata deformation theory. Sometimes one senses that the writers have been obliged by considerations of space to close the door on unexplored avenues. This adds to the appeal of the book, in the event, as one is inspired to explore for oneself. Certain themes recur. Szymanowski’s apparent aesthetic shift circa 1914, when he outgrew his Germanic influences and embraced French music, Hellenism and Orientalism, is central for many. It yielded some of his most characteristic music, of which Symphony no. 3 (‘Song of the Night’), the Mythes and the First Violin Concerto, composed in the incredibly fertile years from 1914 to 1916, are the first point of attraction for many Szymanowskians. Some observers see a further shift...