A Russian Remembers
Old Friends and New Music, By Nicolas Nabokov. (Hamish Ham- ilton. us. 6d.) THIS is a book of loosely connected jottings, beginning and ending with pure autobiography but including chapters of mixed personal reminiscence and more objective criticism. The author left his native Russia not long after the Revolution, and, after some years in Germany and France, has been domiciled for a- considerable time in the U.S.A., acquiring many American characteristics without losing a certain Russian flavour which, like many Irishmen in a similar position, he consciously exploits on suitable occasions. The opening chapters might belong to a charming, minor novel of the Tchekhov period, and they give a witty and nostalgic account of the upbringing of the last pre-revolutionary clutch in a White Russian "nest of gentlefolk." The final chapter describes the author's relationship with the Russian authorities in Germany imme- diately after the end of the war, when he served in the American
army and understood better man most the vagaries of his ex-countrymen's behaviour. The objective interest of the book lies in the chapters dealing with Diaghilev, Stravinsky, Prokofiev and Shostakovich. Mr. Nabokov, who had family ties with Diaghil5v, was also one of the " dis- coveries " of his latest period, and; having worked with him, is in a good position to sum up his character and achievement. His final judgement is that Diaghilev "was never at the mercy of the fashionable set and never really did he cater to their tastes. What he did was to use them ; use their prestige, their money, their gossip, their vanity, their snobbishness, their elegance and depravity, for the benefit of his enterprise—which is to say, for the benefit of art." He makes the interesting point that Diaghilev never allowed his own personal taste to interfere in his judgement of music of all periods and styles ; but adds that he did possess a personal prefer- ence—for the "monumental works of late Romanticism."
Mr. Nabokov's own taste, as shown in his comments on contem- porary composers, is very different. Thus he refers- in passing to "the antediluvian monstrosities of Sibelius and Richard Strauss and other demi-vierges of Western musical culture" (whatever that may mean). His enthusiasm for the music of Stravinsky is unbounded, and his entertaining account of staying with the maestro in California belongs more to the high-brow gossip column than to musical criticism. He throws interesting light on the character and career of Prokofiev. The character is clearly described and most unlovable ; but he seems undecided in his own mind on whether Prokofiev's music has always been fundamentally the same in character—his original contention—or whether, since his return to Russia, various changes are "the result of conformism . . . or of the natural development of his art." He confirms the now general impression that Shostakovich started as a greatly gifted musician, whose character and cast of mind were in every way alien to the patty ideal of the artist, to which he has only been able to conform by a series of spiritual contortions.
The writing is pleasant in an easy, journalistic way and often suggests that Mr. Nabokov must be a good raconteur. One or two of his stories are fantastically tall. Thus Diaghilev could hardly have met Gounod "who had just become rich after the success of Faust," since Faust was first given in 1859 and was almost imme- diately successful. And the story of Leo XIII dancing Viennese waltzes to the accompaniment of Liszt would need more than Diaghilev's s■,ord to convince me of its veracity.
MARTIN COOPER.
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