Kikimora, Opus 63, Légende pour orchestre

Anatoly Konstantinovich Liadov was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, on April 29, 1855, and died in Polinovka in the Novgorod District on August 16, 1914. 

Kikimora was completed in 1909. According to most sources, Alexander Siloti conducted the premiere in the Hall of the Nobility in St. Petersburg with the Imperial Court Orchestra in December 1910. 

The score is dedicated to Nikolai Tcherepnin. The score of Kikimora calls for piccolo, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, English horn, 2 clarinets, bass clarinet, 2 bassoons, contrabassoon, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, bass drum, cymbals, xylophone, harp, celesta, and strings.

Almost too talented for his own good, Anatoly Liadov mastered many trades. A longtime teacher at St. Petersburg Conservatory, where his students included Sergei Prokofiev and others who would become major figures in Russian music, he also excelled as a pianist, conductor, editor, and composer. His friend, mentor, and colleague Rimsky-Korsakov believed deeply in Liadov’s talent and potential, calling him “talented past telling.” 

But, known for “loose living” and a short attention span, Liadov was notoriously lazy and easily distracted. Shy and retiring, he failed to capitalize on some important opportunities. Most famously, Ballets Russes impresario Serge Diaghilev gave him the plum commission of scoring a new ballet — The Firebird — for a dazzling Paris premiere, but Liadov never managed to produce a single note. This left the door open for Igor Stravinsky, who never suffered from a lack of self-confidence — and the rest is history. In a fond recollection, Stravinsky called Liadov “a darling man…sweet and charming,” and “the most progressive of the musicians of his generation.” Liadov championed the avant-garde music of Alexander Scriabin (1872-1915), whose influence can be heard in the glacially slow harmonic rhythms, shimmering trills, and mystical atmosphere of Liadov’s symphonic poems The Enchanted Lake and Kikimora.

Liadov excelled in small forms. Stravinsky commented that “He composed little, because he worked slowly — one might say minutely, as if with a magnifying glass.” The longest of his compositions (Eight Russian Folk Songs for Orchestra) lasts less than 15 minutes. Most are much shorter. For piano he wrote numerous tiny mazurkas, bagatelles, preludes, and what he called “biryulki,” named after tiny carved wooden toys used in a Russian children’s game. Like other Russian composers of his era, Liadov was torn between Western models like Chopin, Liszt, and Schumann on the one hand and the Russian folk music tradition on the other. 

To a large extent, Liadov shared the nationalistic aesthetic views of the “Mighty Handful” composers (Rimsky, Balakirev, Cui, Borodin, Mussorgsky) and was even known as the group’s “sixth” junior member. Living through one of the most turbulent and violent eras in Russian history, Liadov avoided engagement with political and social issues and sought refuge in the fantasy world of Russian fairy tales and legends and the severe beauty of the Russian natural world.

In the first decade of the 20th century, Liadov wrote his best-known orchestral works, all inspired by folk music and legend: Baba Yaga (1904), Eight Russian Folk Songs for Orchestra (1906), The Enchanted Lake (1908), and Kikimora (1909).

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The Kikimora is a malevolent female house spirit that can slip in through the keyhole. Often she takes up residence behind the stove in a peasant’s cottage. According to most versions of the story, Kikimora grew up with the magician of the Stone Mountain, where, as Liadov writes in a descriptive note to the score, “From dawn to sunset the magician’s cat regales kikimora with fantastic tales of ancient times and faraway places, as kikimora rocks in a cradle made of crystal. It takes her seven years to reach maturity, by which time her head is no larger than a thimble and her body no wider than a strand of straw. Kikimora spins flax from dusk and to dawn, with evil intentions for the world.” In some tales, Kikimora is the “goddess of the house” who terrorizes poor housekeepers. 

After a brief and foreboding introduction in the very low strings, rocking figures represent the cradle’s gentle movement. The English horn enters with a soulful folk-like diatonic tune associated with the cat that lulls Kikimora to sleep. The interval of a tritone, a diminished fifth, traditionally used to identify supernatural beings, follows Kikimora throughout. The chiming celesta rings out like the crystal of the cradle. In the second part, a fast scherzo, Kikimora has grown up and engages in clowning and scampering about, with clattering outbursts from the xylophone. The music accelerates to a prestissimo finish as Kikimora runs off to continue wreaking havoc.

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“It is my ideal to find the supernatural in art,” Liadov once said. “Art is the realm of the unreal. Art is a fantasy, a fairy-tale, a dragon, a water-fairy, a wood-demon — give me something unreal and I shall be happy.”

Harlow Robinson

Harlow Robinson is an author, lecturer, and Matthews Distinguished University Professor of History, Emeritus, at Northeastern University. His books include Sergei Prokofiev: A Biography and Russians in Hollywood, Hollywood’s Russians. His essays and reviews have appeared in the Boston Globe, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Cineaste, and Opera News, and he has written program notes for the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, New York Philharmonic, and Metropolitan Opera.

Pierre Monteux led the first BSO performance of Kikimora, on December 3, 1921, repeating it at Sanders Theatre in Cambridge and at Symphony Hall the following February.