Carmen Suite for Percussion and Strings
Rodion Shchedrin (b. 1932)

THE STORY

Rodion Shchedrin studied composition and piano at the Moscow Conservatory, where he later returned to teach and received an honorary doctorate. He has won numerous awards including the USSR State Prize, Lenin Prize, State Prize of the Russian Federation, and Dmitri Shostakovich Prize. At the behest of Dmitri Shostakovich, Shchedrin assumed the position of chairman of the Composers’ Union of Russia after the older composer’s tenure.

Shchedrin’s works encompass a wide variety of genres, ranging from chamber music to piano concertos, symphonies, operas, concertos, and ballets. Ballet holds a special place in his musical output: his wife, Maya Plisetskaya, was prima ballerina assoluta (“absolute first principal ballerina”) of the esteemed Bolshoi Ballet. Shchedrin arranged (he preferred to call it “a meeting of the minds”) Bizet’s opera Carmen into a ballet suite at the request of his wife, whose favorite role was the titular character. Although Soviet censors initially banned Shchedrin’s ballet for its purported lasciviousness and the Minister of Culture called the music “mutilated,” Shostakovich intervened and voiced his support for the Carmen suite, which ultimately resulted in the reversal of the ban.

LISTEN FOR

• The foreshadowing of the Habanera by the chimes and plucked violins in the introduction
• The rousing repeated phrase in the Bolero—which is actually not from Carmen, but instead from Bizet’s L’Arlésienne Suite No. 2—updated with imaginative harmonic effects in the upper strings that sound like woodwind flourishes and dramatic glissandi in the marimba
• Shchedrin’s musical wit and humor, often created by changing the most famous melodies from Carmen or through interaction between the strings and percussion

INSTRUMENTATION

Timpani, percussion, strings

Notes on the music by Emily Shyr