Chaliapin and Russian Musical Culture in Japan (20–30s of 20th century)

• Main Author: Sarkisov K. O.
• Format: Article
• Language: Russian
• Published: Nauka 2021-01-01
• Series: Ежегодник Япония
• Subjects: european musical culture; vocal and dramatic skills; violinists of the russian school; harbin
• Online Access: http://www.yearbookjapan.ru/images/book/2020/japan_2020_345-370.pdf

In the history of Russian-Japanese cultural ties, there will be a kind of anniversary at the beginning of 2021: 85 years ago, in February and May 1936, a great Russian bass singer Fyodor Chaliapin was on tour in Tokyo, Nagoya, and Osaka with unprecedented triumph. A little more than half a century had passed since Japan opened up to the world and to the flow of foreign culture after the Meiji revolution. Over the years, in the process of “Europeanization”, Japanese society revealed not only a gravitation towards Western culture, but also a deep understanding of it and a delicate taste. The performances of the “king of vocal”, as Chaliapin was called in the Japanese press of those years, were primarily an event of European opera traditions. However, more than a half of the repertoire of the famous singer consisted of arias, songs, and romances by Russian composers. Glinka, Mussorgsky, Rachmaninov, Rimsky-Korsakov, Anton Rubinstein, Tchaikovsky, Borodin were performed in Chaliapin’s original interpretation. The singer’s tremendous success among the Japanese public illustrated the capability of the Japanese audience to organically perceive the best examples of vocal art, an emotional reaction to universal cultural and psychological values, dramatic and tragic collisions, humor of characters and situations, despite all national distinctiveness, and most importantly — an aptitude to give an adequate assessment of performing skill and excellence. The article mentions the reaction in Japan to the tour of the masters of Russian musical art of other genres. In assessing the performances of Russian violinists and pianists, the Japanese media was generous with eulogy. Among them, first of all, were the students of the St. Petersburg Conservatory professor Leopold Auer — Yasha Kheifets, Efrem Zimbalist, and Misha Elman. The article gives an idea of the significant contribution of Russia to the formation of European musical culture in Japan in the 1920s and 1930s. A special role in European musical culture in Japan at that time was played by the Russian intelligentsia from the “white emigration”, in particular, in Harbin, once the capital of the Chinese Eastern Railway with a predominant population of Russian emigrants, which became a city of the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo. Japanese musicians and performers visited Harbin to hear the Russian musicians from the local symphony orchestra play. This group also toured Japan.