Grahame Gordon Innes – Symphony 21 Siberia

Description

I spent a month in Siberia in August 2017, and this symphonic impression resulted. Forms / structures are original, influences are probably transparent – Rimsky-Korsakov, Borodin, Moussorgsky, Shostakovitch to name a few. Needless to say I loved Siberia.

The first movement – Forest spirits – has a modified sonata form and depicts the vast stretches of coniferous woods that are virtually all you can see from an airplane once you head east from Moscow. You will hear the birds and wolves, and maybe just maybe a lumbering bear or two.
The second movement came about as a free rhapsody and details experiences along a massive river more than 3 times the width of the Thames and with several islands. The Yennessy winds through hundreds of miles of countryside, past villages and towns and wildernesses, with dangerous boulder cliffs and sandy beaches, with ports and harbours, ferry traffic and cargo haulers, pleasure craft and patrol boats. A regular sight – huge artificial rafts of cut timbers tied togethered and tethered to the shore awaiting tugs to move them to the timber mills.
The third movement – my wife and I visited Krasnoyarsk for a few days. Berthed there on the Yennessey was a paddle steamer – The Tsar Nicholas II. Apart from being the Tsar’s personal river vessel it had also brought Lenin to Krasnoyarsk when he was under arrest. Now it is a museum dedicated to the revolution, and it has been made to look like Aurora, the vessel that fired the shot that signalled the assault on the Winter Palace. During our tour of the paddle steamer, Soviet Marches were playing over loudspeakers, to create the right atmosphere. So that is why my Siberia Symphony has this type of 3rd Movement.
Fourth movement; Monasteries abound throughout Russia and Siberia is no exception. If you love the atmosphere of religious buildings and enjoy world culture no visit to foreign lands is complete without monastery visits. The music is derived from numerous short motifs which collide around each other sometimes settling into brief contrapuntal passages in different combinations. This is one of the few times I have used chordal melodic movement like Holst.