London Symphony Orchestra

1 Introduction: Andante assai
2 Dance: Allegro
3 First Intermezzo: Allegro moderato – Andante moderato –
4 Changing of the Guard: Moderato
5 Carmen's Entrance and Habañera: Allegro moderato – Quasi andante
6 Scene: Allegro moderato – Tempo precedente – Andante assai
7 Second Intermezzo: Larghetto
8 Bolero: Allegro vivo
9 Torero: Moderato con stoltezza
10 Torero and Carmen: Lento – Tempo I
11 Adagio: Andante moderato – Adagio
12 Fortune-Telling: Andantino – Andante assai
13 Finale: Allegro – Tempo precedente – Andante assai

In the early 1960s, Rodion Shchedrin was asked by the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow to write a ballet on the story of Carmen, the factory girl who seduces a toreador and is stabbed to death by a vengeful soldier.

Shchedrin didn’t think it possible. He believed the subject of Carmen had ‘become inseparable’ from the music used to depict her by Georges Bizet, who wrote the famous opera of the same name. Shchedrin came to the conclusion that the only way to write new music for Carmen was to re-use Bizet’s.

For the production, Shchedrin delivered a 13-movement piece for string orchestra and percussion. It was a semi-abstract narrative on the Carmen story, ‘not a slavish obeisance to the genius of Bizet,’ in Shchedrin’s words, ‘but an attempt at a creative meeting of minds.’

Shchedrin didn’t simply rearrange Bizet’s music. Instead, he treated it as raw material from which something recognisable but entirely new could be hewn. A sense of singing would be conveyed by the orchestra’s vocalising strings. Bizet’s rhythmic snap-and-crackle was polished-up using all manner of percussion instruments, tuned and unturned, which also add a fierce dramatic commentary.

Shchedrin treated Bizet’s famous melodies in a particularly interesting way. Sometimes, he leaves a tune we know unfinished, or forces us to imagine the harmonies underneath it – the heroine Carmen as seen from the other side of the stage lights, transported to a different time and place.

Shchedrin was not afraid to use such devices to make specific dramatic points. For example, Bizet’s famous 'Habañera' theme is broken into fragments in the opening Introduction, foreshadowing the tragic destruction of Carmen herself.

Using striking instrumentation for First Intermezzo and Changing of the Guard, Shchedrin dissects and reassembles key melodies including the opera’s fate motif (heard on low strings underneath a shimmering marimba).

The naïve soldier Don José appears and makes love to Carmen in the sixth movement, Scene, which uses music from the duet sung by the two characters in the opera.

In the ninth movement, Torero, we hear the famous song of the Toreador Escamillo, whom Carmen seduces to Don José’s fury. But Shchedrin plays a wicked trick on the melody, separating out its constituent phrases and putting them in the wrong order.

For two movements – Bolero and Torero and Carmen – Shchedrin borrows music not from Bizet’s Carmen, but from the composer's ballet L’Arlésienne and opera La jolie fille de Perth respectively.

In Adagio, the fate theme is played in full – again on plunging low strings – signalling Carmen’s demise, itself sealed by her turning over of the death card during Fortune-Telling.

The Finale includes music from the opera’s culminating confrontation between Carmen and Don José, who stabs the heroine to death. It incorporates a chilling repetition of music from the Prelude.

Shchedrin’s wife, Maya Plisetskaya, danced the title role when the ballet was first performed at the Bolshoi in May 1967. The work was immediately banned by the Soviets for its perceived over-sexualisation of the title character. And for ‘disrespecting’ Bizet.

^{Note by Andrew Mellor}

Rodion Shchedrin
^{b 1932}

Born in 1932 to a composer and music teacher, Rodion Shchedrin attended the Moscow Choral School and Moscow Conservatory, where he studied composition and piano. Early on in his career, he made the decision to follow the path of composition, with his works combining traditional and modern compositional processes.

His ballet Carmen – Suite premiered at the Moscow Bolshoi Theatre in 1967 to great success. Subsequent ballets for the Bolshoi, including Anna Karenina, The Seagull and Lady with the Little Dog, have brought Russian literary classics to the musical theatre stage. Further works influenced by literature include his operas Lolita and A Christmas Tale, while the influence of Russian folk and classical music, and poetry, can also be seen in his music.

Shchedrin was professor of composition at the Moscow Conservatory for five years from 1964. He succeeded Shostakovich as chairman of the Composers’ Association of the Russian Federation, as per Shostakovich’s wish. Among numerous other prizes and accolades, he was awarded the Russian State Order Second Class ‘for services to his country’ in 2007.

^{Composer profile by Lydia Heald}