It's a real godsend to be able to discover the ballet Narcissus and Echo by Nicolaï Tcherepnine, an all-too-forgotten composer today. Yet he is one of the young Russians, such as Rachmaninov, Glazunov, Medtner or Taneïev, who succeeded their great elders in the Group of Five and Tchaikovsky. He inherited an exceptional orchestral skill from his teacher Rimsky-Korsakov, before teaching himself at the St Petersburg Conservatory where he had Sergei Prokofiev as a student.
Appointed as a conductor at the Mariinsky Theatre before the October Revolution, Nicolaï Tcherepnine conducted the inaugural season of the Ballets Russes in Paris in 1909. It was for Serge de Diaghilev that he composed his ballet Narcissus and Echo, which was hastily premiered in 1911 in place of Daphnis and Chloe, whose composition Ravel had not finished in time. Danced by Nijinsky in a choreography by Fokine and the Bakst sets planned for Daphnis, the work seemed boring to the Parisian public. It was an unjust judgment, since this sparkling score deserves much more than to simply be forgotten.
Dance générale, Bacchanal in a dreamy Greece, here we are in the same universe as Ravel, one adorned with a colourful and magical orchestration, and whose use of a choir further reinforces - in a rather disturbing way - its closeness to Ravel's future ballet. It was certainly a kind of stagnation that may have confused the audience, accustomed at the time to the wild rhythms of Borodin, Rimsky-Korsakov and the young Stravinsky.
The beautiful recording of Łukasz Borowicz is a timely reminder of the music of this great Russian composer who lived in Paris where he died in 1945, leaving behind a large number of stage compositions (operas and ballets), symphonic music, chamber music, vocal works and piano works. © François Hudry/Qobuz