Rezetdinov L. Lyrical Suite Devoted to A. Berg for Chamber String Orchestra. Score

Leonid Fiatovich Rezetdinov (born in 1961) is the graduate of the Petersburg Conservatoire, where he studied composition at professor Boris Tishchenko up to 1985. In 1990 the composer conferred at the ISCM course in Poland conducted by V. Lutoslavsky. From 1990 to 1998 Rezetdinov taught composition and instrumentation in the Rimsky-Korsakov Music College. Nowadays he serves as a director of the “Production Centre” at the StPetersburg Documental Films Studio and the Managing Board member at the Russian Composers’ Union Music Fund so as the “Sound Ways” association.

Among the most significant compositions there are three symphonies (including the “Planets Symphony” and the “Matrix”), three chamber symphonies (including the “Little Instrumental Mass” ), opera scenes “Adventures of Gallant Soldier Schweik”, “Hatred” – one act ballet to the war-time verses by Olga Berggoltz, five cantatas for mixed choir and orchestral casts, “Bolero Libero” for full symphony orcherstra, operette “Circus Printinprum”, two string quartets, two wood-wind quintets, two brass-quintets, chamber-instrumental compositions for different casts, different opuses for choir. Leonid Rezetdinov works a lot in the sphere of children’s music and practices in the cinema music (20 soundtracks for both feature and documentary films).

The “Lyrical Suite Devoted to Alban Berg” for string orchestra appeared in1991. The genre in memoriam had been mastered by Berg himself in his famous Violin Concerto with the dedication to the passed away Manon Gropius, daughter of Walther Gropius and Alma Mahler. The inscription went “to the angel’s memory”. Leonid Rezetdinov continues Berg’s tradition, calling his composition “Lyrical Suite”. He resorts to the New Viennese expressionists (Berg’s confederates), nourishing this manner with his individual dodecaphonic technique (invented by Arnold Sch?nberg, Berg’s tutor, and widely used by Berg himself), specific rhythmical devices and polyphonic turns. Rezetdinov inserts themes-symbols, rather veiled and vague, so as Berg quoted Wagner’s “Tristan and Isolde” in his “Lyrical Suite” and Bach’s choral in the Violin Concerto. Together with his own dodecaphonic themes Rezetdinov adduces and elaborates themes from the enumerated opuses by Alban Berg. This is exactly elaboration, not just mere patchwork, when the heterogeneous utterance is manifested, contradicting with the author’s imaginative sphere. Rezetdinov interlaces the other composer’s themes with his own ones so as to weld them in one whole. The main theme-series moving by the thirds from the Violin Concerto becomes the base of the whole facture. Berg’s Finale theme from the Lyrical Suite sounds invertible and varied a bit at the beginning of the second movement, penetrating as the ground of the substance. Due to this idea the adduced themes are accepted as the attributes of the homage genre being concealed, but existing on the background thus making for authentic Berg’s style.

However, the stylistics of the Lyrical Suite by Leonid Rezetdinov is far from imitation. This music’s expressionism originates from the border of the 20th–21st centuries. It seems to have imbibed everything there was after Berg, i. e. the intonation laid by Berg, approaching to Bartok, Shostakovich and even Stravinsky. Rezetdinov’s music absorbed the extreme anti-romantic lexicon — sternness, graphic manner and laconic brevity. The new border of the ages stained this music in the hints of Berg’s style in the composition devoted to him.