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- Alexander Levine
Natasha's Waltz
(Music for a theatre production of "War and Peace")- Peters Edition Limited (World)
Commission of GSMD
WP October 1994 at Barbican, London, GSMD Symphony Orchestra, directed by Peter Clough | First performance in 1995 at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama, London, given by the GSMD Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Orlando Jopling
Programme Note
Natasha’s Waltz is part of an orchestral score commissioned in 1994 as incidental music for a theatre production of Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace staged at the Barbican, in London, in 1995, probably the first ever theatre production of the work. In 1921, Mikhail Bulgakov had begun work on a libretto of War and Peace, and in 1931 Josef Stalin encouraged him to complete this work, which was intended for the Leningrad State Drama Theatre. However the performance never took place.
The music of Natasha’s Waltz stands as a complete ‘concert piece’, and could be seen as a distillation of the romantic, and at the same time, tragic love story of Natasha and Andrei. The opening portrays the scene of the ball at the family house of Count Rostov where his daughter, young Countess Natasha Rostova, and Duke Andrei Bolkonsky meet for the second time in the story.
The piece is intended to evoke the atmosphere of Russia nobility during the early period of the 19th Cen ury. The feeling of “Russian-ness” which this music conveys is strongly linked to the main female character of the novel, Natasha. The piece comprises three sections, where the musical language of the outer sections is intended to express a gamut of emotions as well as the aspirations of the young Countess. The mood of festivity partially changes in the middle section and it becomes relentless, and increasingly distant from the atmosphere of festivity and glitter of the opening. The fi nal section the music, however, brings back the atmosphere of the ball, with its freshness and magic.
Alexander Levine