Slavic Soul Trivia Quiz

Answer: Carnival

"Nature's Realm" Op. 91 is the first (Nature) part, "Carnival" Op. 92 is the second (Life) part and "Othello" Op. 93 is the third (Love) part in this trilogy that explores the governing forces of our existence. "Carnival" lasts for 9 minutes and it owes its festive overtones to the flutes, oboes, clarinets, bassoons, trumpets, trombones, tubas, timpani and cymbals.
Antonin Dvorak was a Czech composer who became famous for using motives from Moravia and his native Bohemia.

Answer: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

30 year old Mozart started composing his Symphony No. 38, later called the "Prague Symphony", in 1786, when his popularity in Prague was at a peak because of the recent performance of his opera, "The Marriage of Figaro."
Mozart did not write it for the city itself but rather as a token of gratitude towards the city that so generously embraced his talent.
The symphony is composed of three parts, Adagio-Allegro, Andante and Finale-Presto.

Answer: Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov

Based on the "One Thousand and One Nights" or "Arabian Nights" tale, "Scheherazade" has vibrant and colorful oriental undertones made vivid by the use of woodwinds and strings.

Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov was one of The Five, a group of Russian composers who chose to incorporate Russian melodies, fairy tales and folklore in their compositions. They were Mily Balakirev, César Cui, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Alexander Borodin and Modest Mussorgsky.

Answer: The Enchanted Lake

Anatoly Liadov is known for having refused the commission for the ballet "Firebird" which was taken up by Igor Stravinsky. Liadov himself was very pleased with "The Enchanted Lake" and this is what he wrote to a friend about it: "How picturesque it is, how clear, the multitude of stars hovering over the mysteries of the deep.

But above all no entreaties and no complaints; only nature - cold, malevolent, and fantastic as a fairy tale. One has to feel the change of the colors, the chiaroscuro, the incessantly changeable stillness and seeming immobility."

Answer: The Nutcracker

French choreographer Marius Petipa commissioned Tchaikovsky to write the music for the ballet he was producing on a story written by Alexandre Dumas, based on an earlier story called "The Nutcracker and the Mouse King" by German author E.T.A. Hoffmann. Tchaikovsky did so reluctantly because he wasn't very fond of the story and, even though the music was praised, the ballet, initially, was not a success. Many years after Tchaikovsky's death , George Balanchine choreographed a new version of "The Nutcracker" for the New York City Ballet.

It became so popular that other ballet companies started including it in their winter programs and it became an international Christmas tradition.

Answer: Dmitri Shostakovich

Shostakovich was the head of the Leningrad Conservatoire's piano department at the time. When the siege begun, he started composing feverishly in an attempt to boost the patriotic moral of the people. He worked under appalling conditions for a month until he was evacuated to Moscow where he finished his composition in December 1941. "The Leningrad Symphony" was performed in the besieged city in August 1942, by starving musicians, to a standing ovation of one hour.
The Leningrad siege lasted for 900 days (1941-1944) and it had a death toll of 600,000 people.

Answer: Vltava (The Moldau)

"My Homeland" is a set of six nationalistic poems which uses traditional folk melodies to celebrate the countryside and history of Bohemia and Moravia.
They are Vysehrad (The High Castle), Vltava (The Moldau), Sarka (The female Warrior), Z ceskych luhu a haju (From Bohemia's woods and fields), Tabor (A Bohemian city) and Blanik (The mountain and the legend of the knights of St. Wenceslas). The poems are performed as a whole except for Vltava which is often performed on its own.

Smetana is widely considered as the father of Czech music. He used his work to firmly advocate his country's right to independence from the Habsburg Empire.

Answer: Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

"Winter Dreams" was young Tchaikovsky's first serious effort at composing symphonies. He chose a familiar and typically Russian theme, the long, dark winters but he struggled with form and after many exhausting revisions, he finally produced a fresh and textured composition which was well received by his peers at the Moscow Conservatory where he had just started working.
His final form has four parts, Dreams of a Winter Journey, Desolate Land - Land of Mists, Scherzo and Finale.
From this first symphony, Tchaikovsky came to compose such masterpieces as "Swan Lake" and "Sleeping Beauty."

Answer: Romeo and Juliet

Prokofiev started composing his music for the "Romeo and Juliet" production by the Kirov Ballet, in 1935. His original happy ending - Romeo and Juliet did not die but moved somewhere, was censored by Soviet bureaucrats, as were other parts of his composition like dances and complex music variations. Largely altered, it was finally performed by the Kirov Ballet in Moscow, in 1940.
Russian ballerina Galina Ulanova and English Dame Margot Fonteyn were the most famous Juliets and Russian dancer Rudolf Nureyev was the most famous Romeo.

Answer: Viktor Hartmann

Viktor Hartmann was a Russian architect and painter who met and became close friends with Modest Mussorgsky through the composer Mily Balakirev. Hartmann died very young, only 39 years old. Most of the paintings shown at the exhibition that inspired Mussorgsky have been lost.
Modest Mussorgsky was another one of The Five, the composers of Russian Romanticism. As a Russian Nationalist he was more interested in the mysticism of Russian history and traditions than Western classicism. "He liked what was coarse, unpolished and ugly," in Tchaikovsky's words.
The ten pictures that inspired his ten-piece piano suite depicted a gnome, an ancient castle, children at a park, an ox-cart, peeping hatchlings, two Warsaw Jews, women and merchants at a marketplace, the catacombs of Paris, the hut of a Russian witch and an entrance gate to Kiev.