Recovery of Forgotten Voices

For the upcoming release of her album Yulyia, Soprano Sarah Moulton Faux has handpicked fifteen of Yuliya Weissberg Rimsky-Korsakov’s art songs for voice and piano. Equally at home in traditional opera as in new music, Moulton Faux describes her journey with the forgotten composer. She also shares a bit about how the recording came to life, the incredible chemistry she shares artistically with Russian American pianist and composer Konstantin Soukhovetski, himself no stranger to the drama of opera in his previous piano transcriptions, which is palpable in their collaboration for the album produced by Classical Producer of the Year and seven-time Grammy winner Judith Sherman, and two-time Grammy winner Alan Bise, at Azica Records. Available for pre-order here.

By Ilona Oltuski

“Working with remarkable Sarah was a joy,” shares pianist Konstantin Soukhovetski. “Her attention to the finest details in the text and music, historical context, and language is very inspiring, and the discovery of Yuliya Weissberg Rimsky-Korsakov was a true revelation,” he explains.

Moulton Faux had met the pianist in Southampton, through her involvement with its Arts Center, where Soukhovetski had taken over the artistic leadership of Lilian Questel’s longstanding performance series. The new album marks Moulton Faux’s second collaboration with Judith Sherman on a historical art song project. In her liner notes to the album, Moulton Faux, along with musicologist and choir director Dr. Kirsten Santos Rutschman, re-examines some fascinating historical background on Juliya’s life and art, drawing on the newfound interest in similarly unjustly forgotten voices.

Pianist/composer Konstantin Soukhovetski and soprano Sarah Moulton Faux - Photo credit: Emma Kazaryan

“ I came across Juliya, in connection with Rimsky-Korsakov, working on some of his music during the Pandemic, “ she shared in an interview, also describing Susan M. Filler’s research guide on four female composers, “Alma Mahler and Her Contemporaries: A Research and Information Guide (2018), which includes 89 annotated entries on Weissberg, alongside sources on African American composer Florence Price and Spanish Mexican composer María Teresa Prieto Fernández de la Llana.”

It was through the assistance of musicologist Dr. Olga Panteleeva that Moulton Faux was able to identify and examine many of Weissberg’s published scores, which were archived in the Russian State Library in Moscow. “Thanks to Panteleeva’s research, a doctoral dissertation by Marina Moiseeva Mazur, from the St. Petersburg Conservatory, titled ”Composer Julie Weissberg: Personality and Creative Heritage,” turned out to be an essential resource, she explains.”

Throughout her exploration of the composer's works, Faux couldn't help but wonder whether Yuliya Lazarevna Weissberg (also known as Weisberg or Veysberg) might have avoided obscurity if she had released her compositions under the family name of Rimsky-Korsakov after marrying Nikolai's son and becoming a member of the prominent Russian musical family.

Of a generation that aims to write many wrongs, this thought did not sit right with Moulton Faux, and she decided that channeling a new listen to Yuliya’s voice should become her next project.

Yulya Weissberg Rimsky-Korsakov with her husband Andrej Rimsky-Korsakov

She had studied under Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov since 1905 but had been dismissed from the St. Petersburg Conservatory after participating in a student rebellion against a supposedly oppressive musical autocracy. She also had helped put on Rimsky-Korsakov’s opera Kaschey the Immortal against the university’s wishes. While the composer’s professorship was reinstated that same year, Yuliya’s was not,  and she went on to continue her studies in Berlin and Dresden.

Upon her return to St. Petersburg and marrying Nikolai’s son, she was already a young leader in the contemporary music community, with performances of her works in Germany and Russia. Publishing more than 75 works during her lifetime, including art songs, symphonic poems, one symphony, chamber works, folk songs, and operas for children, even earned her a reference as “the first professional female composer in the history of Russian musical art of the 20^th century,” by her contemporary, the Jewish composer Mikhail Gnesin. Despite the misogynistic tendency of the time, renowned Russian music critic Leonid Sabanayeff described her as ”a master in the full sense of the world,” as mentioned in the liner notes. Often drawing on texts by influential women from various countries—such as Indian activist Sarojini Naidu, Polish author Maria Dąbrowska, or Russian poet Sophia Parnok, many of whom were political activists—her art songs featured a distinctly contemporary voice. I found a mention of these poets by Chris on AudioAsylum.

Yuliya perished during the Nazi siege of Leningrad during World War II. Despite her incredible talent and accomplishments, interest in her work had faded, further obliterated during the Soviet years.

“I am very proud to be part of this project. Bringing this unjustly forgotten music out of oblivion is, indeed, an honor and a joy,” shares Konstantin Soukhovetski. “Her mastery of piano and voice writing, combined with the ability to set the text in a most profound, yet unexpected way, is truly magnificent. Some of the piano parts are among the most challenging in the art song literature, but that music itself is enough of a reward.”