Ruben navarrette: Rubinstein's opera concerns the liberation of Russia from the "Tartar yoke" navararette: in reality the victory, if hollow, failed to secure complete emancipation from the Tartars. He says Rubinstein was not a composer of great national signi$?cance; he was a conductor.
Ruben navarrette: Rubinstein's opera concerns the liberation of Russia from the "Tartar yoke" navararette: in reality the victory, if hollow, failed to secure complete emancipation from the Tartars. He says Rubinstein was not a composer of great national signi$?cance; he was a conductor.
Ruben navarrette: Rubinstein's opera concerns the liberation of Russia from the "Tartar yoke" navararette: in reality the victory, if hollow, failed to secure complete emancipation from the Tartars. He says Rubinstein was not a composer of great national signi$?cance; he was a conductor.
Ruben navarrette: Rubinstein's opera concerns the liberation of Russia from the "Tartar yoke" navararette: in reality the victory, if hollow, failed to secure complete emancipation from the Tartars. He says Rubinstein was not a composer of great national signi$?cance; he was a conductor.
On 9/21 April he conducted the second of Prince Odoyevskys
Russian Concerts, which included works by Wielhorski, Glinka, Alyabyev, and Verstovsky, as well as another performance of his own overture to Dmitry Donskoy. Toward the end of April he returned to Moscow, and on 9/21 May played his Piano Concerto in E minor in its entirety at the Hall of the Nobility. A few days later he wrote to his publisher, Bernhard: In the nancial respect my concert was a failure, but the public was happy.14 Rubinstein needed a more regular source of income, and he tried to secure a position that would give him a better living, but, as he reported to Bernhard, the general (i.e., Aleksandr Mikhaylovich Gedeonov, who headed the Directorate of Imperial Theaters from 1834 to 1858) had categorically refused him two recently announced posts, claiming they had already been lled. In mid-June Rubinstein set off on a concert tour of Kharkov and Odessa but returned to Moscow at the beginning of July to begin setting the Tartar scene of Dmitry Donskoy, completing it in October. The opera concerns the liberation of Russia from the Tartar yoke, as the period of Russias domination by the Golden Horde is generally known. Grand Duke Dmitry, advancing his army toward the Don (hence the later appellation Donskoy), met the Tartar Khan Mamay on Kulikovo eld on 8 September 1380 and routed him. This was the rst signicant defeat that the Russians inicted on their oppressors, and the battle is considered a milestone in Russian history. In reality the victory, if not entirely hollow, failed to secure complete emancipation from the Tartars, which took about another hundred years to achieve. In the hands of Glinka or Borodin, a heroic subject such as this might have produced a work of great national signicance, but Rubinstein was content merely to use it as a pretext for introducing a clichd and trivial love story. Dmitry and the boyar Tverskoy are rivals for the hand of Kseniya. When Dmitry is betrayed by his erstwhile allies, he is forced to face Mamay alone. His victory over the Tartars, of course, secures for him the prize of Kseniyas hand. With the score of the opera completed, Rubinstein rented an apartment on the Bolshaya Konyushennaya in St. Petersburg for twenty rubles in silver a month and began looking for pupils. He also brought with him two works that he had begun the previous year: the set of Six Studies for piano, later published as Op. 23, and the Six Fables of Krlov.15 Given Rubinsteins implicit belief in the need for musical professionalism, he must have taken particular delight in Quartet, the fourth song of the cycle. Here a monkey, a donkey, a goat, and a bear sit down to play a string quartet, but they cannot decide how to arrange themselves in order to captivate the world with their art. Whichever position they choose, the music still comes out badly, so they ask a passing nightingale to resolve their dilemma. The nightingale replies: In order to be a musician you need skill and ears a little more sensitive than yours. However you sit, my friends, you will still be no good as musicians. Rubinstein had received vague assurances from the Directorate of Imperial Theaters that Dmitry Donskoy would be staged after Easter, but his doubts