Tcherepnin, Alexander

Preface

Alexander Tcherepnin – Magna Mater

(b. Saint Petersburg, 9. / 21. January 1899 – d. Paris, 29. September 1977 in Paris)

Preface
During the first ten years of his new life in Paris following his emigration in 1921 with his family, Alexander Tcherepnin composed his first purely orchestral work, “Magna Mater.” The name alludes to a cult that emerged around the goddess Cybele in Anatolia, popularized with the Greeks, and later adopted by Rome beginning in 218 BC. As one of the six members of the Parisian group known as, “The Constructionists,” akin to the more well-known group known as “Les Six,” Tcherepnin benefitted from the great amount of innovation within 1920s Paris at the time, resulting in others works such as his first opera, “Ol-Ol” (1930) and the “Slavic Transcriptions for piano” (1924) among others. First published in 1931 by Universal Edition, its first and only recording was completed in 2003 by the Singapore Symphony Orchestra.

Created during the mid-1920s, Alexander Tcherepnin’s short work “Magna Mater” reflects a turning point in the composer’s theoretical creativity and European career. Having left now Soviet Russia in 1921 for Paris, he never returned during his lifetime like many others emigres such as Sergei Rachmaninoff and Igor Stravinsky. At the time, Nikolai Tcherepnin, Alexander’s father and former student of Rimsky-Korsakov, was working at the Tbilisi Conservatory in Georgia as the country’s musical life was growing rapidly. However, due to the changing conditions of Imperial Russia’s political life, Tsar Nicholas II having abdicated in 1917 with the Russian Civil War igniting as a result, Nikolai and his family were forced to flee, choosing Paris, France as their destination. The French capital was a popular location for the “white emigres,” the name for those among the first-wave of Russian emigration following the dismantling of Tsardom and the ensuing revolutionary chaos, this proved a monumental step for Alexander who quickly integrated in Parisian musical life thanks to his pianistic virtuosity and compositional adroitness. Much like Sergei Prokofiev, one such “white” emigre, Alexander had the opportunity to establish a truly international career and see locations otherwise inaccessible to Soviet citizens, composer or otherwise. During the first decade of his Paris stay, Tcherepnin had begun to integrate himself into the neoclassical musical life of his surroundings, evidenced in large part by his aesthetic resonance and cross-pollination with composers like Stravinsky, a particularly prominent “white” émigré. Meanwhile Parisian critics and writers like Boris Schlötzer aptly noted his relation to Soviet post – ”Silver Age’’ leaders like Nikolai Myaskovsky and Alexander Scriabin; …

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