1976
"Pastorale". For oboe and piano





10m
Music
Memorial Museum-Apartment of Sergei Prokofiev 10/16/2022
M. Chakrygin (oboe)
P. Shatsky (piano)
Pastorale for oboe and piano stands apart in the composer's work. The author himself did not include this work in the official list of his legacy; the manuscript was found during the analysis of archives after the composer's death.
The uniqueness of this opus is that it is the only composition by Yuri Butsko for a solo wind instrument.
The thematic basis of this composition was the themes from the music for the film “Poshekhonskaya Starina” based on Saltykov-Shchedrin, which was released in 1975.
"Pastorale" is two lyrical sections framed by three oboe cadenzas, partly this comes from the early work of Yuri Markovich, where he wrote several partitas: for cello, for piano, for organ. These partitas, as well as "Pastorale" begin with a prelude - a free cadenza section, which symbolizes the birth of the world. In the prelude, the musical material is a multitude of tunes, as if the composer is tasting the sound, his thoughts jump over different ranges of the instrument, the piano comments. The result of the search for intonation is a marvelously beautiful ballad melody, written in the spirit of a folk song, and the texture of the piano imitates the gusli strumming. The culmination of this section is the second oboe cadenza, in which the melody, undergoing various transformations, leads the listener to a tragic question. The composer does not answer it, instead the second lyrical section begins, at the end of which there will be a Postlude - the third cadenza of the oboe. Melting away towards the end, flying away into the heights, the music moves away and the listener is immersed in silence. One of the main musical ideas of Yuri Butsko, which was embodied in this work - "Music is born from silence and goes into silence"
This composition was not performed during the author’s lifetime for various reasons, one of which was the extreme technical complexity of the oboe part.
