Serge Bortkiewicz: Reanimation of Talent
TWO MORE SERGE BORTKIEWICZ WORKS WILL APPEAR IN UKRAINE
Symphony No. 52 in D-major, From My Homeland, written by Serge Bortkiewicz (Serhiy Bortkevych) in the mid-1930s, premiered in Ukraine in mid-May. The Day wrote about the return of Bortkiewicz’s music (No. 15, May 22, 2001), and a sequel seems quite logical, considering that the composer’s name is practically unknown in Ukraine, not even to music critics, and that another two compositions — full orchestral scores of Piano Concerto No. 3, Opus 32, and the Russian Rhapsody, Opus 42 — are being returned to Ukraine owing to our publications.
As it was, shortly after my article appeared in The Day, I received a letter from Dr. Wouter M. A. Kalkman, of Leiden in the western Netherlands, offering Ukraine’s first performer of Bortkiewicz, the Chernihiv Philharmonic, scores of his compositions. Incidentally, its conductor Mykola Sukach, who had decided to restore historical justice and return all of the celebrated composer’s works to Ukraine, believed, relying on his sources, that his third piano concerto existed only in clavier form. It is thus, owing to people’s enthusiasm in different cities of different countries, that Ukraine is reviving the name of its gifted son doomed to oblivion simply because he refused to accept Communist ideology.
THE FUTURE COMPOSER WAS CAPTIVATED BY RUBINSTEIN AND TCHAIKOVSKY
Serge Bortkiewicz was born in Kharkiv on February 28, 1877 to a family of musicians. His grandmother Theresa Ushinsky was not only a fine musician but also composed small piano pieces. His mother Sofiya nee Ushinsky played the piano well and loved music passionately. Even as a high-school student, she was honored to perform several pieces for the imperial family visiting Kharkiv. Sofiya also did a great deal to propagate music in Kharkiv as an activist and then head of the local branch of the Imperial Russian Music Association. And when a music school appeared in the city it was largely thanks to her active initiative.
Serge Bortkiewicz, the fourth addition to the family, grew up in a world of music from birth, and his mother was the first teacher. Then he took piano lessons from Illia Slatyn, musical school principal and organizer of symphony concerts. His next teacher was Albert Bensch, St. Petersburg Conservatory graduate, gifted pianist and pedagogue, Louis Brassin’s pupil.
The boy was most impressed, however, by two great composers: Anton Rubinstein, who played his music for two hours in his singular style, and Peter Tchaikovsky who conducted the Kharkiv Philharmonic a year before his death.
While in school, Serge was lucky to have a very special teacher of Latin, a gifted man who instilled in the boy a love for ancient art. Bortkiewicz was an avid reader and his favorite authors were Shakespeare, Goethe, and Schopenhauer.
YEARS OF STUDY
At 18, Serge Bortkiewicz decided to dedicate his life to music, but his strict father did not share the young fellow’s enthusiasm and insisted that he continue study at the university. Although Kharkiv University had quite a reputation, Serhiy chose the one in St. Petersburg where Rimsky-Korsakov, Liadov, Glazunov, Auer, Werzbilowicz, Subel, Arek, Yesipova, and Blumenfeld were on the Conservatory’s teaching staff.
Serge was enrolled in St. Petersburg University’s Law School and, simultaneously, in the Conservatory. There was taught the theory of music by Anatoly Liadov and the piano by Karl van Arek, a real taskmaster who enjoyed everyone’s respect.
Revolutionary sentiments among the students caused the authorities to close the university, while the students went on strike and Serhiy could not take the exams. Attending meetings and rallies, he became intuitively aware of the dubious situation. There was danger in the air (it would eventually lead the large country to Bolshevism and inconceivable human suffering). He wrote, “Being a young man with hot blood running through my veins, wholeheartedly welcoming any form of progress, not only in the world of art, but also in other walks of life; being a man with a quickly responding heart, I soon noticed, with utmost disgust, that the political movement of those so-called leaders was aimed not at creating but destroying the state. They want to destroy everything without bothering to think over what is actually to be done for the good of this country.”
Serge decided to quit the university. Until he could receive permission to leave Russia, he enlisted in the Aleksandr Nevsky Regiment. He told his father about this. However, military service in the city’s severe climate proved devastating to his system. Serhiy was often ill, several times close to death. He returned to the family estate in Artemivka, near Kharkiv, in the summer of 1900. It was there he decided to continue studying music in Germany.
THE COUNTRY OF HIS DREAM
In Leipzig, he studied composition under Salomon Jadassohn, and after his death under Karl Piutti. He took piano lessons from Alfred Reisenauer. Bortkiewicz wrote, “Reisenauer was a pianistic genius. He did not need to practice much, it came to him by itself... He thought and spoke very little about technical problems. Although I must thank my master very much as regards music, I had to realize later that I would have done much better if I had gone to Vienna in order to cure myself under Theodor Leschetizky of certain technical limitations which I tried to overcome only instinctively and with a great waste of time.” (Courtesy of Stephen Coombs; www.hyperion-records.co.uk).
Serge’s dream as a boy had finally come true. Now he lived in Germany. Reisenauer, himself a pupil of Liszt, had a fancy for his student, Serge. He would often invite him over. Those were unforgettable hours in company with the piano. After several successful appearances in student concerts, Serge was offered and happily agreed to play Liszt’s Concerto No. 2 in A Major in Munich, conducted by Felixe Weingarten. At the Conservatory, he received the Schumann Prize as the year’s best performing student. Now he was preparing for a concert in Berlin but fell ill and had to return to the family estate. There he met his sister’s schoolmate Yelizaveta Geraklitova. They married in July 1904. “Now I am married. A new period in my life has begun,” he wrote. The young couple went to Berlin where they would spend ten years. His first composer’s attempts were not quite successful. After playing his Piano Concerto No. 1, Opus 1, Bortkiewicz destroyed the music (some elements would be used in his Piano Concerto No. 2). His second concerto was not published. Four piano pieces, Opus 3, appeared in print, in Leipzig, only in 1906. His publisher Deniel Rather was the first to notice the young composer’s talent.
During those years he appeared in concerts in Germany, Austria, Hungary, Russia, and France. He also taught at the Klindworth-Scharwenka Conservatory. In 1914, with the outbreak of World War I, Bortkiewicz and many compatriots had to leave Berlin (which he had hoped would be his home city for many years).
AT THE CROSSROADS
Despite enticing opportunities in St. Petersburg, Bortkiewicz returned to Kharkiv. There he played in concert and composed such pieces as his Violin Concerto, Opus 22; Cello Concerto, Opus 20; and for the piano The Little Wanderer, Opus 23; and Troix Morceaux, Opus 24).
The wartime peripetia and approaching Bolshevism were fateful for Bortkiewicz. To the Red commissars he was a hated bourgeois. He and his mother were even arrested by revolutionary sailors and his being professor of the People’s Conservatory did not help. He had a hard time proving to the formidable comrades that, as a professor and musician, he had a right to work in line with his qualifications. Bortkiewicz fled Russia in November 1920. He found himself in Constantinople with only twenty dollars. He rented a room with a piano from a Greek family. Then he came down with malaria and later gave a concert at an American college in Bebek. The Americans liked it and were friendly, and many Russian О migr
О s helped him. Shortly afterward, Bortkiewicz received a teaching job at the Greek-Russian Conservatory and was accepted by the local society. A year and half later he went to Vienna.
RECOGNITION
In Vienna, he composed three piano and cello pieces (Opus 25) a violin and piano sonata, Piano Concerto No. 2 (Opus 28), the piano score adapted to the left hand, specially for Paul Wittgenstein; Piano Concerto No. 3 Per Aspera ad Astra (Opus 32).
The second and third concertos premiered in Vienna in 1923 (with Paul Wittgenstein as soloist) and 1927 (with Maria Nescheller from St. Petersburg). His symphonic poem Othello and oriental ballet suite A Thousand and One Nights were also performed there.
The violin concerto was first performed in Prague, in 1922 (with violinist Frank Smit), and the cello concerto in Budapest (1923). In that period many pianists repeatedly performed the first piano concerto (first played in Berlin by Hugo van Dalen) in Europe and the Americas. Hugo van Dalen, a noted Dutch pianist (1888-1967), was friends with Bortkiewicz for many years. They met in 1910, in Berlin where the composer was a professor with the Scharwenka Conservatory. He dedicated 12 Etudes (Opus 29) to van Dalen, and the latter propagated Bortkiewicz’s music for the rest of his life in the Netherlands (Bortkiewicz died October 25, 1952, in Vienna and was buried there). He performed the third piano concerto and the Russian Rhapsody many times, always to great success. He helped Bortkiewicz with money during the latter’s trying years. Hugo van Dalen’s archives are at the Hague Museum, including 270 letters from Bortkiewicz.
After Dalen’s death in 1967, Bortkiewicz’s music was popularized by Dalen’s pupil Helene Mulholland. After her tragic death in 2000, Dalen’s grandson played Bortkiewicz at the funeral.
RETURN TO UKRAINE
Mykola Sukach, artistic director of the Chernihiv Symphony, fell in love with the music of Bortkiewicz after listening to a part of his first piano concerto. The man is collecting bits and pieces, trying to put together his creative legacy (Bortkiewicz is considered a hundred percent Ukrainian composer, for what has been salvaged is permeated with Ukrainian themes, profound intellectuality, and culture). Mykola Sukach dreams of a festival commemorating Bortkiewicz’s 125th jubilee, and that his music will become part of the compulsory program of the Horowitz Contest. The concert at the House of Columns of the National Philharmonic Society in Kyiv on May 16 with Bortkiewicz’s first piano concerto and first symphony became a revelation for many. Whether or not Bortkiewicz becomes a Ukrainian Rachmaninoff, his name is worth being not only rehabilitated, but also universally recognized.
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This feature would have never appeared but for the kind assistance from Messrs. Mykola Suk of New York (US), Bhagwan Nebhraj Thadani of Winnipeg (Canada), and Wouter M. A. Kalkman of Leiden, the Netherlands.
When this issue went to press, Mykola Sukach received from Dr. Kalkman the scores of the Third piano concerto and the Russian rapsody.
