Symphony No. 5
Elegy for piano and string orchestra
Naxos 8.570369
Reviewing new music – and Alla Pavlova's Fifth Symphony, composed in the autumn and winter of 2005-2006 is as new as it gets – tends to throw up an interesting set of challenges. What are its influences and where does it fit? Does it break new ground or does it till old soil?
One might think that doing the spadework is made easier when the composer obligingly provides explanatory notes with the disc. For instance, Pavlova says the symphony 'has a spiritual programme' - tick that box, then - and is in sonata form. The first movement represents the main theme, the second the second theme, the third the development and the fourth and fifth movements are the recapitulation. Another box duly ticked.
Building on the work’s avowedly 'spiritual theme' Pavlova goes on to say the first movement – Adagio – Vivace – 'expresses [her] personal feelings about Life'. It quickly becomes clear that the music, scored mainly for strings, with limited percussion and just horns in the brass, falls into a distinct harmonic and rhythmic pattern. The high strings emerge from the orchestral mix, yearning, even vulnerable, yet always tethered to a grimmer reality by the lower strings and soft thud of the bass drum. The material is plain, the colours muted.
The second movement – also an Adagio – adds little to what has gone before but it is in the third and fourth movements (Adagio – Vivace and Largo) that the solo violin, played here by Mikhail Shestakov, picks up the yearning motif and carries it forward. Pavlova says somewhat enigmatically that the violin in these two movements is 'important' but does not elaborate. One could assume, in this context, that the instrument takes the music on to a more personal plane; this is not just about faith, it's about Pavlova’s faith and how she sustains it in an uncertain world.
As a Ukranian living in Brooklyn one may also assume that issues of faith and belonging are part of Pavlova’s creative make-up. Her Symphony No 1 (1994) is subtitled ‘Farewell to Russia’. There is something very solitary about this music, much as there is in that of another Russian émigré, Sofia Gubaidulina (b. 1931).
In bringing the earlier material together the concluding Vivace represents an epiphany of sorts. Pavlova insists the music reveals that 'the miracle of Life is greater than our emotions and theories' but if you are looking for transformations of another kind you may be disappointed.
So, if Pavlova's notes represent the theory of the piece what is it like in practice? One struggles to find a suitable comparison for this music. Tchaikovsky at his most lugubrious, perhaps? Anything like Gubaidulina, who shares Pavlova's interest in faith and spirituality? No, Gubaidulina’s is a strong, much more individual voice, more harmonically and structurally varied and, dare one say it, more interesting.
In his November 2003 review of Pavlova's Symphony No 1 my colleague Steve Arloff longed for the material to be more fully developed. And despite Pavlova's assertion that there are many 'important' modulations at play I am tempted to think Steve’s assessment holds true for the Fifth as well.
In Pavlova's Fifth, the lack of modulation in the broadest, non-musical sense makes it too monochromatic for my tastes; the emotional range is just too circumscribed. Some might argue that the choice of a string-dominated orchestra limits the work's expressive possibilities but that needn't be the case. Gubaidulina's similarly searching De Profundis for solo accordion - written in 1978, at roughly the same age Pavlova is now - is rich in its invention, wholly original in its soundscape and arresting in its execution, proof that it's the material not the forces that really matters here.
The filler on the disc is the perfectly pleasant Elegy for piano and orchestra from 1998. Written for a film, The Tragic Healys, this is an attractive little piece, sympathetically played by pianist Andrei Korobelnikov. Here at least the form and content seem to be in a much better balance.
The recording is bright and forward in the usual Naxos style. The orchestral playing of the Tchaikovsky Symphony Orchestra of Moscow Radio is accomplished enough. It's good to hear that the former Moscow Radio Symphony Orchestra in its new guise and worth remembering that it premiered some of the greatest music to come out of Russia in the 20th century.
Which brings me to my final point. Naxos trumpets this disc as the latest in its 21st Century Classics series. Pavlova’s Fifth is certainly a classic in the sense that it’s part of an ongoing classical tradition, but at this stage it’s much harder to assert that it’s a classic in any other sense.
Dan Morgan
MusicWeb, May 2007
Pavlova was born in Russian but has lived in New York since 1990. Her music has been taken up by Naxos as we can see from: Symphonies 1 and 3, 8.557157; Symphonies 2 and 4, 8.557566; Sulamith, 8.557674.
Her music has a directly appealing melodic melancholia. Crude parallels would take in the Tchaikovsky of the Pathétique, the lyric Prokofiev rather than the flâneur-sardonic and the adagio of Rachmaninov's Second Symphony. Pavlova must have been delighted with Ziva's performance which has a fluent sense of forward movement in equipoise with a confidently weighted melancholia. The mot juste between static and dynamic is very evident in the first two movements. This is plangent music - romantic and graceful without being tame or carrying any of the desiccation of neo-classicism. There is something piercingly affecting about this writing. Much of it has a steadiness about it but urgent forward momentum can be heard in the outer movements of this five movement symphony. The sound signature of what is an expansive work carries a strong emphasis on the massed strings. The only brass are the horns. The percussion ranks are also slimmed down.
The composer points out in the liner notes that the symphony has a spiritual programme - which takes the listener from personal feelings about Life, to an escape via meditation into the micro-world of the lotus flower, the disturbances of the real world, the realisation that the journey of life is also its Goal. Such programmatic background is interesting but the symphony stands on its atmosphere and emotional gravitas.
The brief Elegy has been recorded before on Albany. The music again has Pavlova's trademark breathing plangency and subtly regretful air. It has the air of Rachmaninov sumptuously blended with the music for Love Story and Dr Zhivago. It was written for the film The American Healys (1998).
It is a pleasure to report that Pavlova’s instinct and compulsion to compose remain as strong as ever and just as potently distinctive.
Rob Barnett
MusicWeb, June 2007
Unlike her other symphonies Alla Pavlova’s latest symphony (her fifth) is lighter and scored principally for strings with much less percussion and little brass. However, like her symphonies 2 and 4, which I reviewed in 2003, it is an extremely emotionally-charged piece, full of longing and sadness. The composer’s notes state that the first movement expresses her feelings about life. I would say that the entire symphony does this. It has very close parallels to her First Symphony which expresses Pavlova’s sadness at discovering, on a return visit to Russia after several years in the USA, that the Russia in which she had grown up no longer existed; the old certainties were gone and the future looked full of anxiety brought on by uncertainty.
Against this background a feeling of nostalgia is perfectly understandable but I fear it is holding back her development as a composer. This nostalgia appears to be a motive force that prevents her from drawing on other influences to inspire her compositions. She has undoubted talent and the fact that she writes in a romantic way is no bad thing – for me at least. However I feel that the music fails to get anywhere beyond a statement – or, in this case a restatement - of her feelings already expressed in her first symphony.
As I pointed out in an earlier review in relation to her third symphony the Fifth has a filmic sound and sweep and its themes have more than a passing resemblance to themes found in Maurice Jarre’s music for Dr Zhivago. The music is pleasant despite its sad overtones but what is lacking is a development which contrasts those feelings with some other more powerful themes and a feeling of resolution at the end. Perhaps after writing five symphonies it is time for her to take stock and see a way beyond the past. I find her music sumptuous and emotionally rewarding and I hope she continues to write - she will of course - composers are driven fortunately for us all - but that she finds new musical furrows to plough.
The short Elegy for Piano and Orchestra again is an emotional piece depicting a tragic love story in which Michael Healy defied the Georgia State Laws by marrying his black slave. It was composed for the main theme of the 1998 film “The American Healys”. As stated above Pavlova writes music that describes tragedy well and the fact that it was written for a film serves to underscore my point about the filmic character of her writing.
The orchestra (the renamed Moscow Radio Symphony Orchestra) and soloists serve Pavlova’s music well with a reading that captures her feelings in a highly accurate and flowing way.
Steve Arloff
MusicWeb, September 2007