Monday, 24 March 2025

Cui Suite no 3 - in Modo Populari

Day 83

Cui Suite no 3 in Modo Populari

Hong Kong Symphony Orchestra

Kenneth Schermerhorn

Following Borodin and Rimsky in the last couple of days I thought I would go onto another member of The Five. Of all the composers in that group Cui has the lowest profile and I am pretty sure that I have never heard a note of his music.  He was a fairly prolific composer as well as being a military engineer of some importance. Among his four operas is William Radcliff, one of the man faux Scottish operas that 19th century romantic composers were so drawn to.  I couldn’t find a recording of that and indeed not much of his output seems to have been recorded. 

This suite of 6 short movements is lightweight but charming. It is in a typically Russian folk song style and I don’t know whether any of the melodies are actually folk tune or not. Most of the movements are simple variations on the initial theme and the first theme comes back at the end of movement six. Nothing outstays its welcome but I sense that Cui didn’t really have much idea of what to do to develop his material.

It is perhaps unfair to judge a composer simply by  one short set of lightweight pieces but I get the sense that had he not been identified as a member of The Five he would have been completely forgotten as a composer. Indeed even in his lifetime he was more prominent as a critic. He had a notoriously sharp pen and manage to antagonise nearly all of the leading composers of his time. Indeed he lived until 1918 and by then was clearly a figure out of his time making vituperative attacks on the music of the day - one of his articles is entitled Concise Directions on How to Become a Modern Composer of Genius without Being a Musician.

I’ve set aside some time tomorrow to complete this survey of The Five with Mussorgsky - a far more important figure.

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