Sylvester, Richard D. Rachmaninoff's Complete Songs: A Companion with Texts and Translations (review)

Abstract

SEER, 94, 2, APRIL 2016 342 cosmopolitanism, and not just employ it as an approving term in opposition to forms of nationalism that are now seen as narrow and exclusionary. None of this is to gainsay the importance of Helmers’ study; indeed, such comments only attest to the timeliness of his work and the significance of the questions it generates. Wadham College, University of Oxford Philip Ross Bullock Sylvester, Richard D. Rachmaninoff’s Complete Songs: A Companion with Texts and Translations. Russian Music Studies. Indiana University Press, Bloomington and Indianapolis, IN, 2014. xxii + 302 pp. Illustration. Bibliography. Indexes. $55.00: £36.00. This Companion, awaited since at least 2002, follows the author’s splendid companion to Chaikovskii’s songs (see SEER, 81, 1, 2003, pp. 129–30). First, it must be said that the new compendium will be equally valuable for music lovers as well as amateur and professional singers. There are, however, a few differences. During the decade between the two publications possible ways of listening to music have, of course, multiplied exponentially. Even in 2002 a discography of recordings was challenging, and over ten years later virtually impossible, so that, instead of it, Sylvester mentions in the introduction to his Index of Singers a selection of outstanding recordings such as the three-disc Chandos collection with Joan Rodgers, Maria Popescu, Alexandre Naoumenko and Sergei Leiferkus accompanied by Howard Shelley. A CD of twenty-two classic recordings of Chaikovskii’s songs was a welcome bonus to the earlier work, whose date, incidentally, is given as 2002 in the biographical note that concludes the book under review, but, mysteriously, as 2004 on the brief note on the back of the dust cover. Such a bonus for Rakhmaninov is, arguably, far less needed now. The immensely painstaking, thorough and hugely informative yet very readable text will be familiar to readers of the Chaikovskii volume. Almost all of Rakhmaninov’s eighty-five songs and romansy were written while he was still in Russia, and range from the highly familiar to some which remain almost unknown. In each case an introductory essay situates the song in the context of the composer’s life and work; the libretti are given in their original Cyrillic, followed by practical rather than academic transliteration and a translation into English. The commentaries on the texts of the songs, and their dedicatees and, indeed, authors are learned and immensely informative. Each song is given its history in terms of words, their origin and, sometimes adaptation, composition and performance history. REVIEWS 343 With the general public, Rakhmaninov is no less popular in the twenty-first century than Chaikovskii, so that it may be hoped that this excellent sequel will be purchased by public libraries as well as by committed music lovers and, especially, singers who will learn much about some of their favourite songs as well as being offered a unique chance to extend and enrich their repertoires. All lovers of Russian music owe a great debt of gratitude to Professor Sylvester, whose latest book may be recommended without qualification. London Arnold McMillin Howard, Jeremy; Bužinska, Irena and Strother, Z. S. Vladimir Markov and Russian Primitivism: A Charter for the Avant-Garde. Studies in Art Historiography. Ashgate, Farnham and Burlington, VT, 2015. xxiii + 293 pp. Illustrations. Notes. Bibliography. Index. £70.00. In our multicultural and image-saturated age, it is difficult for us to appreciate just how new and incomprehensible, exciting and threatening, the artefacts of Sub-SaharanAfricamusthavebeenontheeveoftheFirstWorldWar.Although European and Russian traders and ethnographers had been processing their perception of the ‘other’ for many years, few of its manifestations were as raw as these. Bringing together research by specialists in Russian, Latvian and African art, Vladimir Markov and Russian Primitivism shines a new light on the perception of African art in early twentieth-century Russia, principally through the writings and photographs of the Latvian-born painter and writer Vladimir Markov, and on its impact on the development of the Russian avantgarde . Five essays on Markov and his milieu put the writer and his interests in clear perspective. Approximately half of the book consists of Howard’s lucid translations of five of his key works — on the exhaustion and...