The blue at the heart of Lake Baikal is virtually black. As it should be – Baikal is the deepest lake in the world. Growing at a few centimetres a year, it will one day cut Europe and Asia clean in two.
Nestled in the curve of the lake is Listvyanka. The houses are old and squat, packed tightly together. Only a church dome rises above the rooftops.
Another world lies hidden inside that church. Outside it may be brilliant, but inside is gloom and shadow. On the lake, the air is wintry, fresh; inside it is heavy with incense and the passage of time.
The dim outline of icons and relics look on in silence. Mysterious, only half-seen. A little light trickles through the narrow stained glass, painting thin shafts of dust glowing gold amid the darkness.
The singing started not long after I had walked in. Not loud, but incredibly pure and resonant in such a silent place. At its root, the Basso Profundo – a voice type almost never heard outside of Russia – descended as deep as Baikal.
There seemed to be a sadness in that sound as old as the church itself. It felt as though it was the shrouded figures on the walls, and not the choir, that had begun to sing.
I have never gone back to Listvyanka. But I will never forget that sound.
In fact, I hear it again and again, every time open the score sitting beside me. It’s Tchaikovsky’s 5th Symphony – the opening bars of the slow movement.
The movement’s main melody is so famous that it is easy to forget how it really starts. There are no soaring horns or singing violins. Just the choir from Listvyanka.
Violas, cellos and basses – bound with incense, heavy with sadness and age. Voices from the heart of Russia.
It may only be 8 bars long, But without it, without what it says, everything that comes afterwards wouldn’t mean anywhere near as much.
The Recording
Valery Gergiev’s Tchaikovsky recordings have always been my favourite. They mix beauty with unforgiving truth in a way that others do not.
Tchaikovsky was the certainly the ‘ultimate melodist’ we all know him as. But he was also a man wracked with shame, doubt and self-loathing. He lived a lie, the darling of a nation that would have rejected him, had they known the truth about his sexuality.
In this recording, the beauty and the tragedy of Tchaikovsky are laid bare. There is no hiding the rough edges or the bitter reality.
In the short term, it may make for grim listening. But in the end, this honesty simply make the hope, the resolution promised in the music all the more compelling.
This is not chocolate box stuff. This is Tchaikovsky as it was meant to be.
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