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Two charming miniatures, “Spring“ and “Autumn,“ from “The Blizzard“ (or “The Snowstorm“) – musical illustrations to a Pushkin story of the same name by the Soviet composer Georgy Sviridov. Весна и Осень из Музыкальных иллюстраций к повести А.С.Пушкина “Метель“. Композитор Георгий Свиридов. In 2024, the world celebrates the 225th anniversary of the birth of Russia's greatest poet, Alexander S. Pushkin. As my personal artistic contribution to mark this date, I created a guitar adaptation of one of the most popular pieces of music inspired by Pushkin: the orchestral suite “The Blizzard“ (Russian: “Metel“) by one of the most prominent Russian composers of the last century, Georgy Sviridov (1915–1998). This is the first in a series of videos featuring movements from the suite that I am working on. HISTORY In 1964, the renowned actor and film director V. Basov approached Sviridov, who was beginning the production of a film adaptation of Pushkin's novella “The Snowstorm.“ Sviridov, who did not favor “abstract“ musical genres and typically composed textual music, greatly enjoyed working for theater and cinema. This work allowed him to embody specific images and situations, and it disciplined him with the necessity of fitting precisely within a given timeframe. The novella “The Snowstorm“ was written by A. S. Pushkin (1799-1837) in 1830, during the golden period of his creativity, known in history as the “Boldino Autumn,“ which produced an unprecedented outpouring of brilliant works that seemed to flow from the poet's pen overnight. Visiting his Nizhny Novgorod estate, Boldino, Pushkin was forced to stay there for an extended period due to a cholera quarantine. In this enforced solitude, a vast number of works in various genres appeared, including prose pieces known collectively as “The Tales of Belkin.“ An example of magnificent, concise, and clear prose, “The Snowstorm,“ written in one day, October 20, is essentially a story about a provincial seventeen-year-old girl, Marya Gavrilovna R., who decides to run away from home to secretly marry her poor and thus unacceptable suitor, and how the snowstorm interfered with the lovers' plans, ultimately changing the fates of three people. The composer was attracted to the idea of recreating in music the image of provincial Russia contemporary to Pushkin. His music lacks the shade of irony that is clearly felt in the novella. The main focus of his musical solution was the poeticization of the simple life of small towns and estates, rather than that of metropolitan officials and aristocrats—a life that was particularly close to Sviridov. He drew on the intonations prevalent at the beginning of the 19th century: waltzes, marches, romances, and the jingling of sleigh bells always hung on the arches of coachmen's horses. But these simple, sometimes naive intonations were spiritualized by him, used creatively, with a special mood unique to Sviridov. The music sounded like a retrospective of a long-gone, but dear, attractive, and nostalgically evocative life. In 1973, from the separate musical episodes created for the film, the composer decided to form a suite. Its nine numbers created a sequential series of illustrations to Pushkin's novella. Thus, it was decided to name the new opus: musical illustrations to Pushkin's novella “The Snowstorm.“ However, by genre, it is precisely a suite with its inherent contrasts between adjacent parts, yet with features of concentricity in form, where the first two numbers are mirrored in the finale in slightly altered versions. The suite consists of 7 movements: Troika Waltz Spring and Autumn Romance Pastorale Military March Wedding “Spring and Autumn“ are two tiny miniatures. The first is a delicate flute melody in allegretto tempo, accompanied by barely audible string chords. Then the violin takes over the same melody from the flute. After a pause, the second miniature begins (this is autumn, a time of fading and weariness), with the same motif but muted, played by a solo violin with a mute, accompanied now by clarinets and horns with their soft chords — pianissimo, with mutes. The English horn hums along with the violin, the oboe inserts its own line, and everything fades away in the faintest pianissimo. In my guitar adaptation, the Spring piece stays close to the original and has a chordal structure. However, in the second piece, I use tremolo as the main technique to carry the melody, introducing many new harmonies and effects. My main idea was to imitate the Autumn Rain with occasional thunder and lightning to create a more drastic and interesting contrast between the movements, making the guitar version more original.
