Symphony on Two Russian Themes

Composer: GLINKA, Mikhail
  • Glinka composed this symphony in 1834, but left it incomplete. It was not published until 1948, in Moscow.1  That edition was edited by Vissarion Shebalin (1902-1963),2 one of the founders of the Union of Soviet Composers (and its chairman for a time). 
    • Though Glinka’s title page called this work a “Symphony on Two Russian Themes,” all he wrote was a slow introduction and the first movement.3
    • This symphony had its first performance in 1938, after Shebalin completed it.4
  • Glinka composed this work while studying in Berlin with Siegfried Dehn.5

Sources

  1. Stuart Campbell, “Glinka, Mikhail Ivanovich,” Grove Music Online (2001), accessed January 21, 2022, https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000011279.
  2. “Symphony on 2 Russian Themes (Glinka, Mikhail),” IMSLP, accessed January 21, 2022, https://imslp.org/wiki/Symphony_on_2_Russian_Themes_(Glinka%2C_Mikhail).
  3. Iosif Raiskin, “Russian Themes: Glinka, Shchedrin and Tchaikovsky,” Mariinsky Theatre, accessed January 21, 2022, https://www.mariinsky.ru/en/playbill/playbill/2010/11/21/2_1200/.
  4. Ibid.
  5. Francis Maes, A History of Russian Music: From Kamarinskaya to Babi Yar, trans. Arnold J. Pomerans and Erica Pomerans (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006), 19.

Cut IDs

41606