Vasily Kalinnikov - Russian Intermezzo For Euphonium Quartet [$10]
Grade III

Program Note:

Vasily Sergeyevich Kalinnikov was born in 1866 to a religious family. His father was a police official who played guitar and sang in the local choir, and encouraged the young Kalinnikov’s musical interests. Kalinnikov’s first music education came in the form of violin lessons, and by the time he was 14, he had landed a job as director of the seminary choir in Voina, his hometown. He briefly enrolled in the Moscow Conservatory before being forced to withdraw due to his inability to pay the fees. He then, however, won a scholarship as a bassoon player at the Moscow Philharmonic Scoiety Music School, where he studied with Il’yinsky and Blaramberg. During his studies he occasionally found employment through theatre orchestras and copyist jobs, but lived in dire poverty nonetheless. Tchaikovsky recommended Kalinnikov for a conductorship at the Maliy Theatre in 1892, and he was appointed assistant conductor of the Italian Theatre a year later. Between 1893 and the end of his life in 1901, Kalinnikov suffered poor health and had to rely on family and friends while living out his days in Yalta. Despite his health, he was an active composer and saw relatively large success with his First Symphony and the incidental music to Tsar Boris. The symphony was premiered by the Russian Musical Society in Kiev in 1897, and was received so well that the second and third movements were given an encore. The symphony made subsequent performances in Moscow, Vienna, Berlin, and Paris, and it is today part of the Russian orchestral repertoire.

The Russian Intermezzo was written in 1894, while Kalinnikov was living in Yalta. It begins and ends in F minor and follows a strict ABA’ form. The work begins with a 12 measure introduction, during which the euphoniums have rhythmic similarities and terraced dynamics (ms.5/7). The introduction ends on a C half dim.7 chord before launching into the theme in the euphonium 1 part. The theme is a simple 8 measure phrase that undergoes modulations to Ab (ms. 21), and Db (ms. 25), before cadencing from C back to F minor in measure 29. The theme repeats in the first euphonium, albeit 8vb, and the second half of the theme is changed to alternate DbM, Cm, Bbm, and Cm triads (as opposed to the first A section, which alternates Fm and Cm7 chords), with the fourth part sustaining a pedal point C on the weak beats. The piece ends on a half cadence in a unison C across three octaves.