![]() ![]() When Liszt heard all this he laughed heartily. The critics, our enemies, were infuriated, and said that Liszt could not have approved of such a work, that he never wrote the letter, that the whole thing was a falsehood, and finally that we composers had compromised ourselves by the publication of such a work. He wrote a charming letter about it to one of his friends in St Petersburg the letter was very flattering to the author of the ‘ Paraphrases.’ One day the friend of Liszt’s who had received this letter mentioned it in a musical article. This music fell into Liszt’s hands, who was delighted with it. Rahter became the proprietor and publisher. Finally, we were requested to publish this work. We amused ourselves by performing these things with people who could not play the piano. The joke was well received by our friends. First one and then another wanted to try his hand at a piece in this style. The four keys, C major, G major, F minor and A minor, of the four parts of the polka, in which the unchanging theme of the Coteletten Polka makes a kind of canto fermo or counter-point, caused much laughter among my friends, afterwards joint-authors of the Paraphrases. I had to yield to the child’s request, and so I improvised the polka which you will find in the collection. ![]() ‘ ”Well, but you do not know how to play, my child.” One day Gania (one of my adopted daughters) asked me to play a duet with her. It is played with the first finger of each hand. The origin of this humorous work is very funny. ![]() ” I take the liberty of sending you, for your little girls, my - or rather our - ‘Paraphrases,’ twenty-four variations, and fourteen little pieces for piano on the favourite theme of the Coteletten Polka, which is so popular with the little ones in Russia. Huberti, December 14th, 1886, Borodin relates the origin of this work :. In one of his last letters addressed to his friends, Monsieur and Madame G. This theme, consisting of four bars, must be played by the first performer on the upper octaves of the piano, while the second player performs the paraphrases, for which more than a mere tyro is needed.įor this lengthy work Borodin wrote three pieces, by no means the least interesting, entitled ” Polka,” ” Marche Funebre ” and ” Requiem “ this last, in which a liturgical chant is developed as a fugue upon the popular and persistent air, is especially striking. ‘About this time, Borodin collaborated with his friends, Rimsky-Korsakov, Liadoff and Cui, in a work, apparently humorous, but really of a serious nature, entitled “Paraphrases,” twenty-four variations, and fourteen little pieces for piano, on a favourite theme obligato, “dedicated to little pianists who can play the air with one finger of each hand. The story of the Paraphrases, partly told by Borodin himself, appears in this quote from ‘Borodin and Liszt’ by Alfred Habets. Have you ever been driven to distraction by children hammering out ‘Chopsticks’ on the piano?! There’s a Russian version of it, Tati-Tati, in single notes rather than in clusters, which formed the inspiration for the Paraphrases. At 2016’s Summer School for Pianists, Karl Lutchmayer, Graham Fitch and I performed the Carillon by Rimsky-Korsakov from the Paraphrases as a five-handed piece. It is a collection of pieces for three hands and five hands, in two editions, by Borodin,, Cui, Rimsky-Korsakov and Lyadov in the first edition, published in 1879, and added to those composers in the second edition, works by Shcherbachyov and Liszt, published in 1893. ![]() The penultimate work in this series of blogposts is the volume known as the Paraphrases. Thank you, dear Reader, for sharing this journey through Mussorgsky’s Pictures and other Russian musical curiosities with me. It’s New Year’s Eve, 6.50am, and time to write the final post of 2016. ![]()
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