Nabokov, Nicolas - Ode: Maditation sur la majesta de Dieu / Union Pacific

'Nabokov's brittle musical idiom projected with great fervour and commitment by Polyansky and his excellent forces, owes something to the Stravinsky of Mavra'
(BBC Music Magazine)

'Valeri Polyansky leads a vivid performance of both works ably abetted by some fine singing from the Russian State Symphonic Cappella.'
- Fanfare

This is the CD premiere of both Nabokov's ballet-oratorio Ode: Méditation sur la majesté de Dieu and his ballet Union Pacific.

Both Méditation sur la majesté de Dieu and Union Pacific show the composer at his best, with music that is immediately appealing in its melodic invention and colourful orchestration.

Polyansky is master of this repertoire, and has had many successes on Chandos in Russian repertoire - especially choral - for which he is most well-known.

Union Pacific was never published. In 1999 the Residentie Orchestra The Hague commissioned a printed and corrected score to be taken from the autograph which is now in the archives of the University of Texas in Austin.

Almost twenty-five years after his death in 1978, few will be familiar with the music of Nicolas Nabokov, cousin of the novelist Vladimir Nabokov. During the 1930s, however, he was widely known as a fine composer.

CHAN 9768

Nicolas Nabokov was born into the Russian gentry in a small town near Minsk. He left Russia for good in 1919, fleeing the revolution. The young Nabokov continued his musical studies with Juon and Busoni in Stuttgart and Berlin. In 1923 he moved to Paris where he enrolled at the Sorbonne and joined the large community of Russian émigrés which included Prokofiev, Stravinsky and Diaghilev.

In the mid-1920s Diaghilev commissioned Nabokov to write a ballet for the Ballets russes de Monte Carlo. The result was his first major score, the ballet-oratorio Ode. This unique work consists of ten loosely related movements: airs, recitatives, duos, choruses and symphonic interludes. Though it has been staged as a ballet, in reality the work seems more of an oratorio in the vein of nineteenth-century Russian romances and Glinka's operas.

In 1934 Nabokov was commissioned to write a ballet to be performed by the Ballets russes de Monte Carlo and Leonid Massine in the United States. The brief was for a truly American ballet depicting the construction of the famous Union Pacific railway. The choreography was simple. Every dancer of the company was allowed a solo and Massine himself danced the barman. In composing Union Pacific Nabokov was mainly inspired by old cylinder recordings of popular songs and dances from the beginning of the century. Union Pacificwas an immediate hit and for several years was performed all over the United States and Europe.

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