Khacha­turi­an! A great name, for a start, that I recall see­ing writ­ten on the back of one of those com­pi­la­tion albums of clas­si­cal music, owned by my par­ents. That album was actu­al­ly a great intro­duc­tion to the clas­sics; it’s where I first heard The Flight of the Bum­ble­bee, The Ride of the Valkyries, The Blue Danube, The Hall of the Moun­tain King, and, in the case of Khacha­turi­an, the fren­zied Sabre Dance.

Aram Khacha­turi­an was born in 1903 in Tblisi, Geor­gia, of Armen­ian extrac­tion (I think it was that patronymic suf­fix, -ian, com­mon to Armen­ian sur­names – such as Kar­dashi­an – that added a cer­tain some­thing). Fol­low­ing the Sovi­eti­za­tion of the Cau­ca­sus in 1921, Khacha­turi­an moved to Moscow, where he enrolled at the Gnessin Musi­cal Insti­tute and sub­se­quent­ly stud­ied at the Moscow Con­ser­va­to­ry. He wrote sev­er­al sig­nif­i­cant con­cer­tos and sym­phonies, but he is best known for his bal­lets Gayane (from which comes the Sabre Dance) and Spar­ta­cus (from which comes the focus of this blog, the cap­ti­vat­ing Ada­gio of Spar­ta­cus and Phry­gia).

Spar­ta­cus fol­lows the tri­als and tribu­la­tions of the famous glad­i­a­tor-gen­er­al, Spar­ta­cus, the leader of the slave upris­ing against the Romans in 73 BC (which actu­al­ly hap­pened, inci­den­tal­ly, and was exhaus­tive­ly chron­i­cled by Plutarch, but that – as I so often have to say – is anoth­er sto­ry!).

The Roman con­sul Cras­sus has returned to Rome from his lat­est con­quests in a tri­umphal pro­ces­sion. Among his cap­tives are the Thra­cian king Spar­ta­cus and his wife Phry­gia. To enter­tain Cras­sus and his cronies, Spar­ta­cus is sent into the glad­i­a­to­r­i­al ring and is forced to kill a close friend. Hor­ri­fied at his deed, Spar­ta­cus incites his fel­low cap­tives to rebel­lion, and ends up free­ing the slave women, includ­ing Phry­gia. The Ada­gio marks their cel­e­bra­tion.

It open with a del­i­cate syn­co­pat­ed rhythm from the strings, and a series of trills on the flute. A slow ascend­ing scale is played by the cel­los, and the oboe eas­es the music into the famous ‘love theme’ for the first time. It’s tremen­dous stuff and read­ers of a cer­tain age will almost cer­tain­ly remem­ber its use as the theme music to the TV pro­gramme, The Onedin Line.

Below, I present a ver­sion of the bal­let per­formed by Anna Nikuli­na and Mikhail Lobukhin of the Bol­shoi Bal­let. In addi­tion, below that, I have cho­sen anoth­er ver­sion: a piano-only ren­der­ing of the music, and I include it because it is just too exquis­ite to omit. The pianist is Matthew Cameron, who, as well as being a vir­tu­oso con­cert pianist, appears to be good-look­ing and, accord­ing to his web­site, col­lects antique his­toric swords, with a col­lec­tion dat­ing back to the 9th cen­tu­ry. Hat tip!