Tcherepnin, Nicolai

Nikolai Nikolaievich Tcherepnin – The Enchanted Kingdom (Le Royaume Enchanté) Op. 39

(b. St Petersburg, 15. May 1873 – d. Issy-les-Moulineaux, 26. June 1945)

Preface
Nikolai Nikolaievich Tcherepnin was a Russian composer, conductor, and pedagogue in the generation after Tchaikovsky and Rimsky-Korsakov. His The Enchanted Kingdom, on the fairy tale of the Firebird (Заколдованное Царство, к сказке „Жар-птица“) was written in 1909-1910 and published in 1910 by the Russian publishing house P. Jurgenson. It is dedicated to Frédéric Groes (Ф. И. Гросс), and it was premièred on March 13, 1910, Tcherepnin conducting, at one of Belaieff’s Russian Symphony Concerts in St. Petersburg.1

Anyone looking at the title page of Nikolai Tcherepnin’s Enchanted Kingdom cannot help but notice its subtitle, on the fairy tale of the Firebird. Furthermore, the twelve-line epigraph printed in the score, with its references to Kashchei and the Firebird, further begs the question: is this work related to The Firebird ballet that was premièred in Paris in 1910 by Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes?

While conducting and composing for the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg in 1903-1907, Tcherepnin’s talents came to the attention of the impresario Sergei Pavlovich Diaghilev (1872-1929), who brought Tcherepnin into his circle. Diaghilev had admired Tcherepnin’s ballet Le Pavillon d’Armide, with choreography by Mikhail Mikhailovich Fokine (1880-1942) and set design by Alexander Nikolaievich Benois (1870-1960), and it featured the extremely gifted dancer Vaslav Fomich Nijinsky (1889-1950) in the starring role. Diaghilev then included Le Pavillon in the opening 1909 season of his Ballets Russes. …

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