Background
Mikhail Glinka was born on May 20, 1804, in Novospasskoe, a village in Smolensk Province.
( Septet in E flat major (oboe, bassoon, horn, two violin...)
Septet in E flat major (oboe, bassoon, horn, two violins, cello and double bass); Serenade on themes from Donizetti's Opera Anna Bolena for piano, harp, bassoon, horn, viola, cello, double bass (1832); Divertimento Brillante on themes from Bellini's Opera La Sonnambula for piano, string quartet, and double bass (1832); Grand Sextet in E flat major for piano, string quartet, and double bass (1832)
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000Z66R6U/?tag=2022091-20
(This Russian chamber music collection featuring the Praza...)
This Russian chamber music collection featuring the Prazak Quartet pairs lesser-known works by Glinka with Tchaikovsky's beloved String Quartet No.1. Joined by pianist Lukas Klansky and double-bassist Pavel Nejtek, the Prazaks explore the strong Italian influences on Glinka's compositions, offering sparkling performances of the Grand Sestetto and Divertimento Brillante. Both works show the composer's debt to Rossini. Symphonic in scale, Tchaikovsky's first quartet is given a full-blooded, Slavic reading, rendered in glorious, multi-channel sound.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B008MZGKCM/?tag=2022091-20
(This new edition of Glinka's beloved orchestral showpiece...)
This new edition of Glinka's beloved orchestral showpiece is the first not based upon the corrupt edition issued under the supervision of Hector Berlioz in the 19th century. Editor David J. Miller has gone back to the original performance scores for Glinka's complete opera for this beautifully engraved and thoroughly researched score, now available in a convenient and affordable format for conductors, music students and interested opera and music fans worldwide.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1608740714/?tag=2022091-20
(This recording of Glinka's melodically marvellous but dra...)
This recording of Glinka's melodically marvellous but dramatically lacking fairy tale opera offers outstanding singing and conducting, a thoroughly idiomatic performance, and modern sound, all of which combine to make it the preferred edition. The only problem, and it's a minor one, is occasional intrusive noise from the house and stage--this is a live recording. For most listeners, the greater intensity of a live performance over a studio recording will overcome that objection. Anna Netrebko's Lyudmila is clear-voiced and winning; Vladimir Ognovienko has a typically back-of-the-throat Slavic production that is not a problem in this repertoire. Conductor Valery Gergiev offers one of his best performances in this series. --Sarah Bryan Miller
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0000041FZ/?tag=2022091-20
Mikhail Glinka was born on May 20, 1804, in Novospasskoe, a village in Smolensk Province.
His training was in the upper-class traditions of the capital. He moved in the circles that passed as enlightened for the time, and he experienced the atmosphere of ferment and question that prevailed in Russia with Western exposure, military and social, after 1812.
A prodigy, Glinka studied music with visiting foreigners in St. Petersburg. Of them, John Field should be mentioned as a strong influence, although the close relationship reported between the two is doubtful. He also studied in Italy, and in Berlin at the age of 33 he studied theory and composition with Siegfried Dehn.
Glinka adopted the practice of the numerous Italians dominating music in St. Petersburg: using stories and tunes from Russian historical and folk sources. Thus, his first opera, A Life for the Czar, or Ivan Susanin (1836), told the story of a Russian peasant's sacrifice as he misled Polish troops marching against the Czar. Although willing to accept the occasional folk reference from visiting Italians, many St. Petersburg opera goers found Glinka's effort "music for coachmen. " Others, however, approved, and among them was the Czar.
With A Life for the Czar, Glinka not only opened Russia's first significant musical chapter but became one of the important figures of European 19th-century romantic nationalism. This coincidence of Russia's first musical efflorescence with the romantic-national phase of Western musical history has left an indelible mark on Russian and Soviet musical thinking to this day.
In his second opera, Ruslan and Ludmilla (1842), Glinka's effort at a "national" style was more marked. The same effort is heard in his numerous songs, a number of which are settings of texts by Aleksandr Pushkin. Glinka ventured also into symphonic music with overtures, the popular Kamarinsky (a fantasy on two Russian folk songs), and music for what has latterly been hailed as the "first Russian symphony" (1834; finished in 1948 by Vissarion Shebalin). His devotion to folk idiom was not limited to the Russian; he treated Middle Eastern, Finnish, Polish, Italian, and Spanish tunes as well. Ruslan and Ludmilla's disappointing reception led Glinka to spend more and more time abroad.
Glinka's influence on all subsequent Russian musical development was profound, not just as romantic and nationalist but also as essentially conservative in means. He encouraged Aleksandr Dargomyzhsky and Mily Balakirev on the one hand, Anton Rubinstein and Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky on the other. That he was not as distinctly "Russian" as was fondly held in earlier decades is no slur on his talent, which was great. He died in Berlin, on his way to confer further with Dehn, on February 3, 1857.
( Septet in E flat major (oboe, bassoon, horn, two violin...)
(This recording of Glinka's melodically marvellous but dra...)
(This new edition of Glinka's beloved orchestral showpiece...)
(This Russian chamber music collection featuring the Praza...)
(The USSR Symphony Orchestra,)
He married Maria Petrovna Ivanova. The marriage was short-lived, as Maria was tactless and uninterested in his music.