The Enchanted Lake, Op. 62

Program notes

About the Work

Anatoly Liadov was one of the great perfectionists of Russian music. He worked slowly, wrote small, and left a modest catalogue, but his best orchestral pieces are gems. The Enchanted Lake, which he called a “fairy-tale scene”, was first heard in St Petersburg in 1909 and is the most loved of them. It lasts only about eight minutes and does something unusual for a Russian fairy-tale piece: it tells no story at all.

There is no witch, no firebird, no hero on a quest. Instead Liadov paints a still life: a lake deep in an enchanted forest at night, its surface barely moving, the stars caught in the water. He is said to have wanted to capture the lake in its stillness and its mystery, and he does it with almost no melody. Everything happens through orchestral colour. Divided, softly murmuring strings suggest the water. Harp, celesta and flute catch glints of light. Slow, drifting harmonies never quite come to rest.

In that sense the piece looks ahead to Debussy and to the colour-painting of the early twentieth century, and it shows why Liadov’s teacher, Rimsky-Korsakov, and his own students prized his ear so highly. It is the kind of music that sounds simple and is extraordinarily hard to write, since every chord and every instrumental touch has to be exactly right.

For an audience in Hanoi’s Ho Guom Opera House, it makes a gentle, hushed opening before the classical sparkle of Mozart and the drama of Tchaikovsky: a few minutes of Russian enchantment that set the ear listening closely from the very first bar.

What to Listen For

Don’t wait for a tune. There isn’t really one, and that is the point. Listen instead to texture: the soft, rocking figures in the strings that suggest ripples on still water, and the way they keep moving without ever going anywhere.

Listen for the flecks of light on top: the harp, the celesta and the flute, placed with great care, like starlight or moonlight caught on the surface. Notice the harmony too. The chords slide and shift gently, never settling into a firm key for long, which keeps the mood suspended and a little uncanny.

The music is quiet almost all the way through. It swells once, gently, and then sinks back into stillness and fades away. Let it wash over you, and marvel at how much magic Liadov conjures from such quiet means.