Saturday, November 10, 2012, 8 p.m.
Alexander Nevsky Cantata, Op. 78
Sergei Prokofiev In 1938, five years after Prokofiev had finished the score for the film Lieutenant Kijé, Eisenstein, the greatest of Russian film directors, suggested collaborating on a film that would tell the tale of the Russian defense in 1242 of Novgorod against the invading Teutonic knights. Many film scholars consider the result of that collaboration, Alexander Nevsky, one of the best films ever made, unmatched in its ability to join pictures with music. Writing of the composer, Eisenstein said, “The Prokofiev of our time is a man of the screen...in that special sense which makes it possible for the screen to reveal not only the appearances and subjects of objects, but also, and particularly, their special inner structure. Having grasped this structural secret of all phenomena, he clothes it in the tonal camera angles
of instrumentation, compelling it to gleam with shifts in timbre, and forces the whole inflexible structure to blossom into the emotional fullness of orchestration.” The national epic of Russia follows the invading German knights, who were originally an order of crusaders, and who periodically overran Eastern Europe, cruelly slaughtering thousands of people. This time, the Russian people called upon Prince Alexander Yaroslavich Nevsky to lead them against the enemy as he had against the Swedes two years before. Nevsky, who took his name from the Neva River on whose banks he had defeated the Swedes, organized a large troop of militia to supplement the regular Army. On April 5, 1242, the people of Novgorod met the Germans on the ice of Lake Chud, near Pskov. In a fierce battle, they drove the Germans onto the ice, which broke underneath them and drowned the invading horde. An enormous success in the Soviet
Union, the film was to have an unusual history as the actual events in the Soviet Union developed in the late 1930s and early 1940s. The Soviet dictator, Stalin, was not displeased to have comparisons made between Nevsky and himself. However, when the U.S.S.R. and Germany signed a nonaggression pact, just nine months after the premiere, the film was withdrawn from distribution. The pact was short-lived and ended in June 1941, after which Alexander Nevsky was once again welcomed on the movie screens of the country in which it was set, serving as a rallying point against yet another German invasion, 700 years after the one portrayed on film. The Cantata has seven sections: “Russia Under the Mongolian Yoke;” “Song About Alexander Nevsky;” “The Crusaders in Pskov;” “Arise, Ye Russian People;” “The Battle on the Ice;” “Field of the Dead;” and “Alexander’s Entry into Pskov.” Copyright Susan Halpern, 2012
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