N.Y. Philharmonic's Russian oratorio

NEW YORK, Dec. 23 (UPI) -- The major musical commission made by Lorin Maazel in his first season as music director of the New York Philharmonic was a 90-minute oratorio with religious overtones by the Russian composer Rodion Shchedrin.

It had its world premiere with three performances last weekend at Lincoln Center.

Titled "The Enchanted Wanderer" and based on a novella by 19th century Russian author Nikolai Leskov, the work for orchestra, a large chorus, and three soloists proved engaging from beginning to end. It has a colorful score written for an amazing array of instruments, and the vocal parts reflect the composer's sympathetic expertise in writing for the voice.

The work was advertised as a concert opera, but oratorio is the term best applied to a work that, though secular in nature, makes repeated reference to liturgical chants and whose protagonist is a sinning Russian Orthodox monk seeking salvation and repeatedly calling on the Holy Mother of God for help.

In its emphasis on religious fervor, it follows in the great tradition of that most Russian of all Russian operas, Modest Mussorsky's "Boris Godunov," which also is rooted in the tradition of Slavonic choral singing. It is not surprising to learn that Shchedrin's grandfather was a Russian Orthodox priest who held Leskov's moralistic writings in high esteem.

Shchedrin, 70, an artist fostered by the musically conservative Soviet system and no modernist, was chairman of the Composers' Union of the Russian Federation from 1973 to 1990 and winner of the Stalin Prize in 1984. His first commission for the New York Philharmonic to honor its 125th birthday was the "The Chimes" concerto premiered by then music director Leonard Bernstein in 1968.

"The Enchanted Wanderer" reflects the composer's ties to Maazel and is dedicated to the conductor who has premiered three of Shchedrin's works -- "Old Russian Circus Music," the Trumpet Concerto, and the Third Symphony. The two men embraced affectionately on stage at the conclusion of the oratorio's premiere, one of the musical season's most anticipated events.

Although there are harmonic dissonances and rhythmic patterns in the score that mirror Shchedrin's familiarity with 20th century avant-garde music, the work has little to offend musically conservative audiences. It has soaring and twining neo-Romantic melodies, quite ethereal at times, and presents musical pictures calling up scenes of galloping Tatar horses and Gypsy bacchanalias with their accompanying clatter and din.

The addition of Russian instrumentation to the usual symphonic battery adds an exoticism to "The Enchanted Wanderer" that is one of its strengths. The score calls for church bells, suspended chimes, a metal tube filled with beads and shot, soprano and tubular bells, whistles, tambourines, sleigh bells, foghorns, glass wind chimes, a tam-tam gong, a balalaika harp, and a guzli zither.

The libretto tells the story of Ivan, a monk who learns to be an expert horse trader when he is captured by the Tatars. This expertise recommends him to the service of a prince who entrusts him with a large sum of money that Ivan uses to purchase a beautiful Gypsy singer with whom he falls in love.

The singer, Grusha, attracts the prince who woos her, then deserts her to marry a rich aristocrat. Bitter at being discarded, the woman begs Ivan to kill her, and he throws her off a cliff to her death, a sin that drives him back to his monastery to spend the rest of his life in expiation.

Ivan was sung by a young Estonian bass, Ain Anger, endowed with a voice of great beauty and expressive power. Finnish mezzo-soprano Lilly Pasikivi, whose remarkable velvety voice has won her international recognition, sang Grusha, and Evgeny Akimov, a Russian whose tenor voice has the plaintive "white" Slavic sound, sang the prince. All were making their Philharmonic debuts.

New York Choral Artists, under the direction of Joseph Flummerfelt, gave a top-notch performance, and Maazel conducted with his usual concentration on sharpness of musical detail.

Although "The Enchanted Wanderer" failed to attract full houses, it is a solid and interesting symphonic work that should be taken up by other orchestras around the world.