'Elegy' by Isaac Schwartz - Исаак Шварц Элегия, орган - arranged and played by Paul Broadhurst

Надеюсь, что российским зрителям понравятся мои уважительные версии их музыки. Пожалуйста, также изучите мой плейлист под названием «Из России с любовью».

Thank you to Val, my Russian correspondent, for bringing this wonderful music to my attention! It's a "grower, not a shower", opening out very beautifully, like an exotic flower.

After a very solemn introduction played as a pedal solo, the gorgeous, soaring melody takes off on the beautiful Violin stop. This very unusual four-foot stop is a real luxury: very few pipe organs can produce such gorgeous string sound. The recording catches the organ just a day after it was tuned, so the Violin stop is sounding at its very best. Many thanks, incidentally, to Adrian, Rob and Marty of David Wells Organ Builders for the wonderful job they do keeping this fantastic but very fragile old girl in such great shape for her age. Roll on the day when we can give her the full overhaul she needs, which is now some years overdue …

Isaac Schwartz (1923-2009) was a Soviet composer who wrote music for some 35 plays and 110 films. Only some years after graduating in 1951 from the Rimsky-Korsakov Conservatory in Leningrad did Schwartz discover that his education had been quietly paid for by Dmitri Shostakovich. The more I discover about the personality of Shostakovich over the years, the more I admire him as an amazing and generous human being as well as a fabulous composer.

This serenely beautiful music was written for the film 'The Stationmaster'. Val provides a lovely little personal detail about the composer: "I was born in place near his home. I saw him alive. He was small and funny."

You may also like other tracks in my playlist of Russian music.

Here's a little afternote. I feel able to share this because very few people will ever find this little corner of the internet, and even fewer will read my notes, and even fewer still will get this far down. But I think it's a moving moment relating to this really beautiful music, which I should share. This afternoon (26 March 2022) I was sitting in my car in a busy car park of a retail park in Prenton (Wirral, UK), next to Sainsburys supermarket. I was listening on my phone to a YouTube recording of this music played by the St Petersburg Cello Ensemble As I was listening, a middle-aged guy led his elderly mother back to his van with her shopping. He opened the side door of the van and lifted her bag of shopping in. She watched him intently, leaning on the trolley, with her walking stick hooked on the back. He then helped her up into the passenger seat, which was a bit of an effort for them both, and she relied for a few moments on that walking stick. He then took her trolley back to where it needed to go, and finally he drove his van away. I was put in mind of my own dear mother, who was briefly frail before a very traumatic illness to which she succumbed over 20 years ago. I was her only child and for very many years before her illness it was just the two of us against the world. Today, in that car park, I longed for the extra time together which a less immediately cruel illness would have given us. And then I suddenly realised what 'Elegy' really meant. I know that Isaac Schwarz would have understood this, as his music sums it up in the most profoundly moving way. And I think that billions of people would also understand that feeling. From today onwards, whenever I listen to this music - or when I play it myself - I will think of that moment in that car park today. And I know I'll play it better next time.

The appalling events in Ukraine at the moment bring these connections into stark focus. It's human connections which matter: life is too short for war. This Elegy stands for so much suffering in the world: capturing it, understanding it, feeling it, and - in some deep but only partial way - healing it. This music comes out of Russia, from a composer whose own father was executed by the state in 1938 as part of the Great Purge, when Schwartz was just 15 years old. Suffering transcends political boundaries. Politicians should be working at eradicating suffering, not making it so much worse as is happening today.

Millions of people (including, I'm sure, a particularly high percentage of politicians) will die without ever knowing the transcendental power of classical music. That's an absolute tragedy. But if you've read this far, you'll be one of the millions who already understand, or who hopefully will go on to explore this amazing aspect of human civilisation. I wish, one and all, a bon voyage!

Recorded 20 November 2021. I subsequently re-recorded this piece in April 2023 in a more refined arrangement and performance, also on YouTube.

Thumbnail: Photograph of the composer

Видео 'Elegy' by Isaac Schwartz - Исаак Шварц Элегия, орган - arranged and played by Paul Broadhurst канала Colours of the organ