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Prokofiev, Rimsky-Korsakov & Tsfasman: Works for Piano and Orchestra / Chochieva, Steffens, BBC SSO
Naïve · Nov 2024CD$16.99 -
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Pejačević: Piano Concerto, Symphony in F-Sharp / Donohoe, Oramo, BBC Symphony
Chandos · May 2022SACD$21.99 -
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Glazunov: 5 Novelettes, String Quartet No. 5 / St. Petersburg String Quartet
Delos · Jan 2001CD$18.99
Piano Works, Vol. 10: Aveu Passione / Boris Bloch
History of the Russian Piano Trio, Vol. 3 / The Brahms Trio
Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov’s influence as composer and teacher was profound in Russia and beyond, yet his chamber music has been overshadowed by his operas and orchestral works. The unfinished Piano Trio in C minor was completed by his son-in-law Maximilian Steinberg to reveal a substantial work of considerable depth. César Cui’s charming and lyrical Farniente is an arrangement from a piano original, while Borodin’s Piano Trio in D major is reminiscent of Mendelssohn in its joyous agility and nostalgic beauty. The Brahms Trio is one of the leading Russian chamber ensembles. Since its foundation in 1990, the trio has regularly appeared at prestigious international concert venues. Legendary musicians such as Tatiana Gaidamovich, Alexander Bonduriansky (Moscow Trio), Valentin Berlinsky (Borodin Quartet) and Rudolf Barshai have had a significant influence on the formation of the performing style and career of the trio. The Brahms Trio has made an invaluable contribution to enlarging the chamber repertoire by rediscovering unknown piano trios of Russian composers of the late 19th and early 20th century.
REVIEW:
The latest release in this excellent Naxos series of Russian Piano Trios features Rimsky-Korsakov’s rarely performed Piano Trio in C Minor, César Cui’s À Argenteau No. 2. Farniente (version for piano trio), and Alexander Borodin’s Piano Trio in D Major. Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov’s chamber music has been overshadowed by his operas and orchestral works. The unfinished Piano Trio in C minor was completed by his son-in-law Maximilian Steinberg to reveal a substantial work of considerable depth. César Cui’s charming and lyrical Farniente is an arrangement from a piano original, while Borodin’s Piano Trio in D major is reminiscent of Mendelssohn in its joyous agility and nostalgic beauty. The outstanding, award-winning Brahms Trio, founded 1988, has performed and recorded much of Russian piano trio repertoire and has made a significant contribution to enlarging the chamber repertoire by rediscovering unknown music by Russian composers of the late-19th and early-20th century.
– New-Classics.co.uk
Russian Spectacular / Shui, Singapore Symphony
This album of orchestral showpieces features four of the five members of the Mighty Handful, a group of Russian composers who, during the second half of the 19th century, collaborated to create a distinct national style. The recorded works illustrate different aspects of their endeavors – both in terms of the musical means they employ and their subject matter. Orientalism is one of the typical features of the music of the group, as witness Balakirev’s Islamey – employing material from the Caucasus Mountains – and Borodin’s Polovtsian Dances, describing the revels of a nomadic eastern tribe during a 12th-century raid into the Russian lands. The most individual of the group was Modest Mussorgsky, with a musical language both powerful and startlingly vivid in imagination. His celebrated Pictures from an Exhibition was composed in 1874 as a tribute to a recently deceased artist friend, and takes in such specifically Russian elements as the fairy-tale witch Baba Yaga and the Great Gate of Kiev. Originally written for the piano it is here performed in the 1922 orchestration by Maurice Ravel. Also by Mussorgsky, the opening Night on the Bare Mountain paints a witch’s Sabbath in bold brushstrokes, and was re-orchestrated by Rimsky-Korsakov after the composer’s death. It is his version, with more sumptuous orchestral textures and a tighter formal plan that is heard here, performed by the Singapore Symphony Orchestra and Lan Shu
Prokofiev, Rimsky-Korsakov & Tsfasman: Works for Piano and Orchestra / Chochieva, Steffens, BBC SSO
Piano Works by the Mighty Handful / Fisher
- The Guardian, London
On his first solo recital disc for Chandos, Philip Edward Fisher performs piano works by members of the so-called ‘Mighty Handful’, a group of five Russian composers – César Cui, Alexander Borodin, Mily Balakirev, Modest Mussorgsky, and Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov – who in the 1860s banded together in an attempt to create a truly national school of Russian music, free of the perceived stifling influences of Italian opera, German lieder, and other western European forms.
The Mighty Handful were all self-trained amateurs. Borodin combined composing with a career in chemistry; Rimsky-Korsakov was a naval officer; and Mussorgsky had been in the Guards, then in the civil service, before taking up music. They tried to incorporate in their music what they heard in village songs, in Cossack dances, in church chants, and the tolling of church bells; in short, the music of the Mighty Handful was brimming with sounds that echoed Russian life. From the more traditional, Chopin-esque Nocturne by Cui through to the technical innovations and strong Caucasus folk elements of Balakirev’s Islamey, the works here all show the composers’ strong connections with the past and the compositional innovations that would come to influence the likes of Prokofiev and Stravinsky, and help change the course of Russian music for years to come.
A graduate of the Royal Academy of Music and The Juilliard School, the pianist Philip Edward Fisher is widely recognised as a unique performer of refined style and exceptional versatility. He has performed across Europe, Africa, and North America where he made his New York debut at Alice Tully Hall in 2002, performing Rachmaninoff’s Third Piano Concerto, and has also appeared at the Merkin Concert Hall and the Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center.
At home he has given performances at the Purcell Room, Wigmore Hall, Barbican Centre, and Royal Festival Hall in London, Usher Hall in Edinburgh, Glasgow Royal Concert Hall, and Symphony Hall in Birmingham. He has appeared as a soloist with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Copenhagen Philharmonic Orchestra, Toledo Symphony Orchestra, and Juilliard Symphony Orchestra, and worked with performers such as exclusive Chandos artist bassoonist Karen Geoghegan, the tenor Robert White, pianist Sara Buechner, and violinists Elmar Oliveira, Philippe Graffin, and Augustin Hadelich. In 2001, Philip Edward Fisher received the Julius Isserlis Award from The Royal Philharmonic Society in London. - Chandos
RUSSIA: ROMANCE & DRAMA
Pejačević: Piano Concerto, Symphony in F-Sharp / Donohoe, Oramo, BBC Symphony
Countess Mária Theodora (Dora) Paulina Pejačević was born in September 1885 in Budapest. Young Dora grew up with all the advantages of an aristocrat: a fairy-tale life of opulent palaces set in idyllic landscapes; privilege, comfort, leisure, and wealth. From an early age she defied convention and walked her own path, one that eventually led her to ‘despise’ the aristocracy. Her father, Count Teodor Pejačević, a lawyer, held several high posts, including that of Civil Governor of Croatia, Slavonia, and Dalmatia (1903 – 07). Her mother, Lilla Vay de Vaya, an ‘exceptionally beautiful’ Hungarian countess, was a gifted pianist and singer, and a fine amateur artist.
Her parents arranged private lessons with teachers at the Music School of the Croatian Music Institute, at Zagreb, which lead to further instruction in Dresden and Munich. Dissatisfied with the ‘limits’ of her formal studies, Pejačević pursued her own intensive course of self-instruction in composition. Having taken her music education into her own hands, she set off to enrich and broaden her intellectual horizons, travelling to cultural centres in Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary. During these travels, she came to know the leading artists, poets, and intellectuals of the day. The Piano Concerto was her first orchestral composition, and the first piano concerto by any Croatian composer. She composed the Symphony in F sharp minor during the first world war, whilst also working as a volunteer nurse. For its first complete performance, in 1920, she revised the work, which is here recorded in this final version.
REVIEWS:
"[The Piano Concerto] boasts attractive melodies, warmly lush orchestration and technically demanding piano writing. Peter Donohoe revels in its manifold opportunities for virtuosic display, but also brings poetry and requisite tenderness to the beautifully lyrical writing in the slow movement. The Symphony is even more impressive…Sakari Oramo and the BBC Symphony Orchestra, supported by Chandos’s customary warm engineering, clearly believe in the works and deliver an extremely compelling performance."
– BBC Music magazine (Erik Levi)
Peter Donohoe’s barn-storming style suits the piano concerto and Sakari Oramo conducts as if these were repertoire works. The recording is rich and full, in the Chandos manner, even though I was listening in ordinary two channel stereo…
– MusicWeb International (Stephen Barber)
The beginning of Pejačević’s first—and only—symphony emerges like a Brahmsian cortege, garlanded with grand strokes and unusually expressive melodies that wouldn’t sound out of place in [Alexander] Borodin’s musical world. But it soon picks up the strange beauty of [Richard] Strauss’s unsettling textures and harmonies, along with his predilection for the cinematic.
Croatian musicologist and Pejačević biographer Koraljka Kos characterizes her work during World War I as 'vigorous,' and borne 'perhaps out of the need to fence herself off from some of the awful reality she witnessed daily.' What she witnessed wasn’t at a remove; despite growing up in an aristocratic family, Pejačević rejected the leisure of her class in favor of work and, during the war, volunteered as a nurse in her village of Našice.
...For all of the threads of music history that come together in Pejačević’s works, their real attraction lies in [a] Caravaggio-esque chiaroscuro, written with an assertive hand but designed to evoke in the listener a sense of precariousness and dispossession. Brahms and Strauss wield power. Pejačević remonstrates it.
--Van Magazine (Olivia Giovetti)
20th Century Flute Sonatas / Lupachev, Laul
Written over the course of a quarter-century, these four flute works reflect the individual approaches to the flute sonata taken by their composers. Hindemith’s aim was to offer new music of buoyancy and brio, tempered by elegiac moments. Prokofiev’s famous sonata has Classical formal elegance, while the sonatas of Denisov and Nagovitsyn are single movement works that explore the flute’s extreme registers, as well as its dynamic contrasts and virtuosic capacities. Denis Lupachev won First Prize at the International Festival ‘Virtuosi2000’ (Russia) in 1993, and in 1997 received the jury’s Special Prize at the Kobe International Flute Competition (Japan). In 1999, he was awarded First Prize at the ‘Leonardo de Lorenzo’ International Flute Competition(Italy). Lupachev gives many recitals and chamber music concerts in Russia as well as throughout Europe. Since 2016, he has organized the International Festival ‘Virtuosi of the Flute’ in the Mariinsky Theatre, St Petersburg. Peter Laul was awarded First Prize in both the Bremen International Piano Competition (1997) and the Scriabin International Piano Competition in Moscow (2000). Laul has given recitals at prestigious international venues such as the halls of the St Petersburg Philharmonic and the Moscow Conservatory, the Auditorium du Louvre, Lincoln Center in New York, the Concertgebouw, Amsterdam, and Suntory Hall and Opera City Concert Hall in Tokyo. He is a consummate chamber musician, who regularly partners with Maxim Vengerov, Ilya Gringolts, Valery Sokolov, Alexander Ghindin and the Borodin Quartet.
Prima Voce - Boris Christoff
CD 1 [70:19] Italian Opera
Wolfgang Amadeus MOZART (1756 – 1791)
Don Giovanni
1. Madamina! Il catalogo e questo [5:35]
Antonio CALDARA (1670 – 1736)
2. Come raggio di sol [3:12]
Vincenzo BELLINI (1801 – 1835)
Norma
3. Ite sul colle [10:13]
La sonnambula
4. Il mulino! Il fonte! … Vi ravviso [5:00]
Giuseppe VERDI (1813 – 1901)
Nabucco
5. Sperate, o figli! … D’Egitto la sui lidi [4:58]
6. Oh chi piange? … Del futuro nel bujo discerno [4:47]
La forza del destino
7. Il santo nome di Dio [6:54]
Simon Boccanegra
8. A te l’estremo addio … Il lacerate spirito [5:53]
Ernani
9. Che mai veggio! … Infelice … L’offeso onor [6:50]
Don Carlo
10. Ella giammai m’amo … Dormiro sol [9:14]
Arrigo BOITO (1847 – 1918)
Mefistofele
11. Ave Signor! [3:55]
12. Son lo spirito che nega [3:48]
CD 2 [71:56]
Russian Opera
Modest MUSSORGSKY (1839 – 1881)
Boris Godunov
1. Prologue: Coronation Scene [10:53]
2. Act 1. Pimen’s monologue [5:52]
3. Act 1. Varlaam’s song [2:33]
4. Act 2. Boris’s monologue [6:05]
5. Act 2. Clock scene [3:58]
6. Act 4. Farewell and Death of Boris [11:46]
Khovanshchina
7. Dosifey’s aria [6:22]
Nikolai RIMSKY-KORSAKOV (1844 – 1908)
Sadko
8. Song of the Viking Merchant [3:46]
The Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh
9. O vain illusion [4:27]
Pyotr TCHAIKOVSKY (1840 – 1893)
Eugene Onegin
10. Everyone knows love on earth [4:55]
Alexander BORODIN (1833 – 1887)
Prince Igor
11. Prince Galitsky’s aria [3:52]
12. Konchak’s aria [7:23]
CD 3 [72:25]
Russian Songs and Sacred Music
Alexander SEROV (1820 – 1871)
1. Shrove Tuesday [4:39]
Traditional Songs
2. Song of the lumberjacks [5:00]
3. The Bandore [3:29]
4. Down Peterskaya Street [2:13]
5. Going down the Volga [3:40]
6. The lonely autumn night [5:22]
7. Psalm 137. By the waters of Babylon [5:25]
Mikhail STROKINE (1832 – 1887)
8. Prayer to St. Simeon [2:36]
Pavel CHESNOKOV (1877 – 1944)
9. Lord have mercy on our people [4:00]
Trad.
10. The song of the twelve robbers [5:56]
Alexander GRECHANINOV (1864 – 1956)
11. Litany [6:02]
Trad.
12. Siberian prisoner’s song [4:17]
Modest MUSSORGSKY
Songs and Dances of Death
13. No 4 Field-Marshal Death [4:55]
14. The Grave [3:44]
15. Softly the spirit flies up to heaven [3:15]
LISHKIN (? - ?)
16. She mocked [3:32]
Trad
17. Song of the Volga boatmen [4:20]
One of the greatest singing artists ever recorded.
Some later recordings of Boris Christoff, expressive and dramatically convincing though they invariably are, can be vocally rather gruff. On these early examples there is very little of that characteristic. The overriding impression is, on the contrary, of an uncommonly sonorous voice with brilliant top notes and a beautiful pianissimo that few other basses have ever been able to muster. Where he sometimes momentarily falters is in the lowest reaches of the voice. He has all the notes that are required but they can sometimes be weak and even slightly unsteady. What impresses most of all is his ability to go to the core of the music, whether it be an aria or a simple song. Like his contemporary baritone colleague – and brother-in-law – Tito Gobbi he was a unique singing-actor, and created a number of deeply penetrating portraits of some of the great bass roles.
The first disc in this volume is devoted to Italian opera. It gives a rare opportunity to hear him in a Mozart role. Considering his histrionic powers one would expect his Leporello to be callous and cynical. It isn’t. This is a man-servant with a heart of gold and his warm reading of the catalogue aria leads us to believe that he feels compassion for poor Elvira. Well, there is a hint of a mocking laughter near the end, but that’s all.
The Caldara aria, with Gerald Moore at the piano, is sung with restraint and honeyed tone. It is hard to believe that this finely honed reading comes from a man with such tremendous vocal resources.
The following six tracks are from a 1955 recital, recorded in Rome with the always responsive Vittorio Gui at the helm of the orchestra and chorus of the Rome Opera. The aria from Norma, preceded by almost 3½ minutes orchestral introduction, is monumental with the male chorus really on their toes. The Sonnambula aria has similarities to Chaliapin’s recording but is warmer, though maybe less elegant than Siepi’s. As Zaccaria in Nabucco he has authority and sings with unerring dramatic intensity. In Il santo nome from La forza del destino my favourite recording has always been Ezio Pinza’s from the late 1920s. Christoff’s reading may be deeper but Pinza’s noble tone still wins the day, if only by a hair’s breadth. Fiesco’s aria from Simon Boccanegra has the nobility that may be lacking in the Forza excerpt but his lowest notes are a bit sketchy.
The four remaining items on CD 1 are all from his earliest recording period, 1949 – 1951. The brilliance in the Ernani aria is truly glorious and there is ‘go’ in the cabaletta. Karajan and the Philharmonia provide ideally refined background for Filippo’s monologue from Don Carlo – a reading that few have surpassed. He recorded the opera complete twice – first in the mid-1950s in the four-act version and then in the early 1960s in the five-act version – both times with Gabriele Santini conducting. The later of them, on DG, was my introduction to this opera and Christoff’s Filippo is still the one that looms in my memory. However I have to admit nowadays that his reading then was a bit cruder than on the earlier one. Best of all, though, is the version with Karajan, on this disc – inward and deeply moving. The two arias from Mefistofele are vital and outgoing with virtuoso playing from the Philharmonia.
Filippo was one of Christoff’s signature roles, but he is even more strongly connected with the title role in Boris Godunov, which he also recorded twice. In fact he also sang both Pimen and Varlaam on both sets. On CD 2 we get some substantial excerpts from the first recording, conducted by Issay Dobrowen. It should be noted, though, that only tracks 1, 4 and 5 are from the complete set. Pimen’s and Varlaam’s solos as well as The Death of Boris were recorded separately a couple of years earlier. In each of the numbers he surpasses all the existing competition, possibly bar Chaliapin, whose Boris was of similar status. Both singers’ readings are necessary listening for anyone who wants to come to grips with this ill-fated Tsar. The depth of feeling and insight is almost unbearable. Masterly is the only word for it. He also makes the most of the other Russian arias. I learnt these – and also most of the Boris Godunov excerpts – through a DG recording with the great Finnish Bass Kim Borg in the mid-1960s, but good though he is – and I couldn’t resist a rehearing of some of them – he can’t quite challenge Christoff. The latter has more face. It should be said that a practically identical programme of Russian arias – these same recordings – was issued just about a year ago on EMI’s GROC label and readers who have already invested in that issue may hesitate about getting the present issue. The Italian programme is, to my knowledge, harder to come by separately and the Russian songs and sacred music on CD 3 is another asset. The first eleven were recorded with the admirable Feodor Potorzhinski Choir.
Many readers may have some favourite songs here and they are sensitively and beautifully sung with Christoff’s usual care for expression. Tracks 3 and 4 – The Bandore and Down Peterskaya Street are particular favourites with me, and the Song of the twelve robbers is another dear friend. Even better as an interpretation is the Siberian prisoner’s song; this is a performance with penetrating psychology, not just superb singing. This and the three Mussorgsky songs, all four recorded in 1951 with Gerald Moore at the piano, are among the greatest song interpretations ever set down. Strong words, no doubt, but I can’t really see any valid counter-arguments. Hans Hotter and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau were on the same exalted level but not necessarily better. The encore, Song of the Volga boatmen, is also masterly in the total control of dynamics.
To me Boris Christoff was unable to sing a dull tone. He is without doubt one of the greatest singing artists ever recorded. As always Nimbus also provide well researched biographical notes by Alan Bilgora. And the sound is as good as the original shellacs or early LPs allowed. Don’t miss this one!
-- Göran Forsling, MusicWeb International
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BORIS CHRISTOFF • Boris Christoff (bs); various assisting artists • NIMBUS 7961/3, mono (3 CDs: 214:40)
MOZART Don Giovanni: Madamina! Il catalogo e questo. CALDARA Come raggio di sol. BELLINI Norma: Ite sul colle, o Druidi. La sonnambula: Il mulino!…Vi ravviso. VERDI Nabucco: Sperate, o figli!…d’Egitto la sui lidi; Oh chi piange? … Del futuro. La forza del destino: Il santo nome di Dio. Simon Boccanegra: Il lacerato spirito. Ernani: Che mai veggio! … Infelice. Don Carlo: Ella giammai m’amo…Dormiro sol. BOITO Mefistofele: Ave Signor; Son lo spirito che nega. RIMSKY-KORSAKOV Sadko: Song of the Viking Merchant. Invisible City of Kitezh: O Vain Illusion. MUSSORGSKY Boris Godunov: Prologue, Coronation Scene; Pimen’s Monologue; In the Town of Kazan; I Have Attained the Highest Power; Clock Scene; Farewell and Death of Boris. Songs and Dances of Death: Field Marshal Death. Khovanschina: Dosifey’s Aria. The Grave. Softly the Spirit Flies up to Heaven. BORODIN Prince Igor: Prince Galitzky’s Aria. Khan Kontchak’s Aria. SEROV Shrove Tuesday. CHESNOKOV Lord, Have Mercy on Our People. GRETCHANINOV Litany. STROKINE Prayer to St. Simeon. LISHKIN She Mocked Me. FOLK SONGS Song of the Lumberjacks. The Bandore. Down the Petersky. Going Down the Volga. The Lonely Autumn Night. Psalm 137, “By the waters of Babylon.” Song of the 12 Robbers. Siberian Prisoner’s Song. Song of the Volga Boatmen
This stupendous collection of really top-drawer recordings, all made between 1949 and 1955, catches Boris Christoff in his magnificent early prime. This was the era in which he was first, and most often, compared to Feodor Chaliapin, and with good reason: In many of these scenes and arias, he lifted Chaliapin’s interpretations wholesale from the old records. Of course, if he hadn’t had a great dramatic instinct and hadn’t been such a riveting stage actor, the comparison might have faded away, and imitation certainly is the sincerest form of flattery.
Without going into each CD in too much detail, what I found interesting was that some of the little mannerisms that became his trademarks—particularly that little downward portamento on low notes at the ends of phrases—were far less noticeable in the 1949–50 recordings than later on. He was also less “snarly” during this period. By the time 1955 rolled around, it seemed as if everything he sang had an undercurrent of menace or a snarl in the voice, however magnificent the sound of his instrument, but the early recordings of Varlaam’s song from Boris Godunov and Leporello’s catalog aria from Don Giovanni have more lightness and humor about them. The 1950 version of King Philip’s “Dormiro sol” from Don Carlo is very slowly conducted by Herbert von Karajan, but Christoff, again, responds with a much subtler and less overbearing interpretation than he did on his 1952 recording of the complete opera with Stella, Filippeschi, and Gobbi (who was his brother-in-law, something I didn’t know).
Throughout his career, Christoff was as legendary for his arrogant and aloof treatment of colleagues as for his brilliant stage characterizations, but in the biographical notes it is mentioned that he was, even in his late 20s, a shy and often reluctant solo singer. It’s quite possible that in addition to the vocal training he received, his teacher Riccardo Stracciari also influenced his high-handedness by feeding his ego. There never seemed to be any real reason for his acting this way—every single one of his colleagues admired his talent and considered him one of the finest singing-actors of his time—but Christoff persisted in treating each and every one of them like crap. One might have thought that his developing a brain tumor in the late 1960s and having to fight his way back to sing again, which he did and gloriously so with no loss of tone or power, might have humbled him a little, but by all reports this was not so.
CD 3 contained the greatest surprise for me, an entire album with Russian choir and (on some numbers) a balalaika orchestra, similar in concept and layout (though with completely different songs) to Nicolai Gedda’s best-selling album of the early 1960s, Evening Bells. Again, Christoff is at his best here, including two more Chaliapin specialties, Down the Petersky and the Gretchaninov Litany. Perhaps the most surprising track of all, to me, is the arie antiche of Caldara, Come raggio di sol, sung with wonderful lightness to Gerald Moore’s typically splendid accompaniment. Since the death of Nimbus’s founder, Shura Gehrman, the label seems to be laying off a little on the swamp of echo-reverb it adds to older recordings. These tracks all have just enough reverb to make the performances sound lifelike and less two-dimensional than they did in their original release (on EMI). Despite the fact that the booklet fails to give the first names of any of the conductors, this set is highly recommended.
FANFARE: Lynn René Bayley
ALEXANDER GLAZUNOV STR QRTS 3 & 5 MUSIC FROM THE
Les Vendredis / Szymanowski Quartet
Les Vendredis is a collection of string quartets by several Russian composers, who played a key role at the famous Friday evening concerts organized by the music publisher Belaieff at the end of the 19th century. Alexander Glazunov, Anatoli Liadov and Rimsky-Korsakov are among the illustrious names that formed that musical society. Belaieff, son and heir of a wealthy wood trader, was a music enthusiast and an excellent violist. Thus, it was only natural that he hosted string quartet concerts in his house and commissioned composers for new string quartet works. Some of these works were published in 1899 by Belaieff’s own publishing house, which he had founded in the 1880s. The works of this collection continue to fascinate to this day, but are, unfortunately, only rarely performed. The Szymanowski Quartet, who are known for their exciting and cleverly compiled concert programmes, perform this repertoire with both pleasure and passion. Their technical perfection suits the musical challenges and their soulful performance highlights the lyrical emotions of these Russian musical treasures.
Glazunov: Complete Symphonies Vol 1 / Otaka, Bbc Wales Nso
Glazunov's Mazurka in G major (1888) actually is a self-contained suite of dances (the dance suite was a popular form of the Russian National school) and points the way toward the imaginative and vibrant style of his later ballet scores. The orchestral fantasy From Darkness to Light was dedicated to Busoni, and it displays (in the darkness section) some surprisingly advanced harmonic devices (Glazunov reportedly had no sympathy for any modernist tendencies, at least later in his career). Out of this pushed-to-the-edge chromaticism emerge the pure tonal harmonies of light, as the work follows a rather obvious path of "transfiguration". Otaka and his forces are just as convincing in these two filler works, making the whole program quite enjoyable. BIS' vivid recording presents a naturally balanced sound picture with a wide dynamic range.
--Victor Carr Jr, ClassicsToday.com
Grechaninov: String Quartets / Utrecht String Quartet
GRECHANINOV String Quartets: in c, op. 75; in F , op. 124 ? Utrecht Str Qrt ? MDG 603 1388 (68: 40)
Grechaninov is commonly thought of as a composer whose works are somewhat conservative and hark back to the style of his teachers, above all Rimsky-Korsakov; but the two quartets given here amply demonstrate the extent to which he fell under modern Western influences. Debussy, Scriabin, Richard Strauss, and Wagner all left their subtle imprint upon the C-Minor Quartet, the fabric of which is a fine construct of emotion and restraint in which the influences are balanced by a clear understanding of form and structure. Iosif Raiskin?s fine booklet note aptly terms this ?New ideas in old words,? which goes some way to explain the compositional aims of Grechaninov in his later years. For all this, his own voice comes across as unfailingly vital and soulful within the music.
It is the Fourth String Quartet in F that most clearly articulates Grechaninov?s vision of what a string quartet might be. Composed at the age of 65 during his self-imposed exile in Paris, the work looks back with some clarity of vision to Borodin in particular, and Beethoven, too, in his quotation and metamorphosis of themes drawn from the latter?s Fifth Symphony. Grechaninov?s lyrical gifts are displayed to the full in the second movement, within which the central section is a notable aria for violin solo with trio accompaniment. The work is worth hearing for the sensitivity of this passage alone.
The Utrecht String Quartet?s performances project confidence, musical handling of individual lines and care with the shaping of phrases that never suggests an over-studying of the score, though these works have undoubtedly been lived with. Recorded with immediacy, the individual instruments relate well to each other and integrate pleasingly within the sound picture. There is a slight bias towards the bass register, which allows the 1680 Medard cello to project its rich tone with ample fullness, though the other three instruments also possess warmth of tone that in no small measure contributes to these enjoyable readings.
The third quartet receives a performance by the Dante Quartet on the Dutton label that was welcomed in Fanfare 28:3. With the only competing version of both works from the Moyzes Quartet on Marco Polo currently unavailable, the present release holds the field. A rewarding journey into all too-neglected repertoire.
FANFARE: Evan Dickerson
Lyatoshynsky: Romances For Low Voice & Piano / Savenko, Blok
The music of the Ukrainian composer Boris Lyatoshynsky (1895–1968) is familiar in his home country but sorely neglected abroad. Lyatoshynsky’s songs are neglected even there: this anthology of his best romantsiy for low voice and piano contains many first recordings.
The songs meld intense Scriabinesque expressionism with elements of Ukrainian folksong in a language that embraces both the lyrical and the dramatic. His setting of Shelley’s Ozymandias, with its warning of the impermanence of power, was a brave act in the Soviet Union of 1924. The booklet contains full sung texts, with English translations by Russian-music expert Anthony Phillips, who also provides an extensive introduction to Lyatoshynsky.
REVIEW:
Ukrainian composer Boris Liatoshinsky (1895–1968) studied with Gliere at the Kiev Conservatory and then became a life-long member of that faculty. Death, melancholy, dread, and grief over unrequited love are the subjects of his chosen texts by mostly Ukrainian poets Ivan Bunin, Alexei Pleshcheyev, Leonid Pervomaiski, Maxim Rylsky, and Volodymyr Sosyura as well as Heine and Shelley. The mood of his songs is consistently somber.
The program of works from 1922 to 1951 is ordered mostly chronologically. His earliest compositions show an evident love of Schumann, Chopin, and Borodin; but the works heard here show a Scriabinesque expressionist style that reflects the cultural chaos following WW I and the Russian Revolution. His 1924 setting of Shelley’s ‘Ozymandias’ with its image of the impermanence of power shows his courage and conviction in the face of Socialist Realism as Stalin was consolidating his stranglehold over the Soviet Union.
The performances here are broodingly powerful. Savenko’s lyric bass is a good fit for these songs, written specifically for bass (or low voice). With smooth legato singing and well applied dynamics, his performance gives full expression to their mournful nature.
-- American Record Guide
Glazunov: String Quartets, Vol. 5 / Utrecht String Quartet
GLAZUNOV String Quartets: No. 1; No. 7 • Utrecht Qrt • MDG 603 1736-2 (52: 16)
Contrasting the first and last string quartets of Glazunov on a single release is a good idea. Unlike many such pairings, they literally do represent the beginning and end of his compositional career, a sort of real-life version of Machaut’s Ma fin est mon commencement . And Glazunov, as one of the foremost admirers in his day of the Franco-Flemish School and its antecedents, would have caught the reference.
His String Quartet No. 1 was the composer’s first published work, premiered in 1882, when he was 16. It was first presented at one of the Friday soirées of the wealthy timber merchant Mitrofan Belyayev, where composers and performers met each week to perform and critique each other’s work. The public premiere took place a few months later, and received an ovation similar to Glazunov’s First Symphony. At a time when Russian nationalism was still a subject of intense debate, with few adequate examples in chamber music, this First Quartet conveys technical assurance and a rich sense of style. The opening movement possesses an authority in its inspired materials and detailed, idiomatic writing that would credit a far more experienced composer. The scherzo is competent, but less individualized, as Glazunov wouldn’t start up his series of remarkable essays in this vein until the Second Symphony, four years later. By contrast, the songful, miniature andante is an early cradle song-like example of the striking lyricism and harmonic subtleties the composer would subsequently lavish on many similar movements. The finale is one of those hybrid sonata-rondos based on two folklike themes that Glazunov would use repeatedly to round off his larger multimovement works.
The Seventh String Quartet was completed in 1930, in Paris. It was among Glazunov’s last compositions, and is both considerably more vivid and imaginative than the pallid Sixth of nine years earlier. Its opening movement is unusually rich in imitative textures and contrapuntal procedures, looking back to the Renaissance, as noted above—not for nothing its subtitle, Hommage au passé . Russian nationalism, which had become less pronounced in Glazunov’s later works, reappears as well, though without discarding the chromatically shifting harmonies of his Eighth and unfinished Ninth symphonies. The slow movement, “Le souffle du printemps,” has the character of a lyrical recitative surrounding lighter material that occasionally launches into full-throated, Borodin-like song. The scherzo, labeled “Dans la forêt mystérieuse,” is the last in an amazing series notable for their delicacy, whimsy, and imagination. This one, spun out of short motifs, irregular rhythms, and counterpoint, creates an impression of unpredictable, fast-moving shadows and complex features beneath a transparently simple surface. The finale, “Festival Russe,” is exactly what it says—with celebratory bells, balalaikas strumming, and a chorus singing joyous hymns, as well as brief recollections of earlier movements, handled with panache. Thus Glazunov returned to the inspiration of his musical youth, and for a brief moment successfully recovered it.
This is the final release in the Utrecht String Quartet’s Glazunov series. I’ve previously reviewed its recordings of the Third and Fifth quartets (MDG 603 1236-2), the Sixth Quartet and the Novelettes (MDG 603 1239-2), and the String Quintet and Suite for String Quintet (MDG 603 1238). The features of its work as a group have remained fairly constant: technically expert playing, a sleekly attractive tone, and an internal response to each other and to the music that is only possible when an ensemble has worked a great deal of time on a given work. The approach is cooler, more objectified than the older Shostakovich Quartet recordings of Glazunov from the 1970s (on Olympia; deleted, but still available from some sources) that feature warmer phrasing, a less linear approach to tempo, and more rubato and portamento. Overall, I respond better in this music to the Shostakovich’s approach, which was developed in training under musicians to whom Russian nationalism was as natural as Beethoven and Brahms. But I find much to enjoy in the Utrecht’s balance, textural clarity, and affection for these works.
The group is least successful in the First Quartet’s finale, where in place of the moderato tempo designation it prefers an andante for much of the movement, and in the Seventh Quartet’s andante affectuoso , which goes at a moderato clip and loses much of its charm in the process. These two instances on this disc (and others, in the series) seem of a part with the group’s emotional coolness, a certain reticence to engage the music at a simple emotional level—hence the inability to express effusive enthusiasm and tenderness. Far better is the finale to the Seventh Quartet, also marked moderato , but with more vigor and flexibility, perhaps because the movement is more complex than its counterpart in the First. The soft playing in the Seventh’s scherzo is a treat, and the four-part harmony, though lacking the richness of the Shostakovich performers, has a spaciousness and majesty that contributes much to the opening movements of both works.
The sound is immediate and close, yet without mechanical noises. In short, this is a distinguished recording by the Utrecht String Quartet, and a suitable one on which to end its survey of Glazunov.
FANFARE: Barry Brenesal
Glazunov: 5 Novelettes, String Quartet No. 5 / St. Petersburg String Quartet
Listeners who are familiar only with Glazunov's symphonic oeuvre or incidental music could well be surprised at his string quartets. They are personal works, generally serious in tone and tersely argued, brilliantly conceived for the medium. The color and evocative imagery of his orchestral music is replaced by an ease—even a playfulness—with counterpoint that never descends into the merely academic. What a shame that these works (and similar compositions by Sergei Taneyev) aren't better known by the chamber-music-loving public!
The String Quartet No. 5 dates from 1908, toward the end of Glazunov's abruptly foreshortened compositional career. (Contrary to legend, he didn't cease composing because of "the political world changing around him" or any other such romantic nonsense. Glazunov stopped because of the extremely heavy responsibilities associated with the directorship of the St. Petersburg Conservatory, which he assumed in 1905 and held effectively until 1928.) It is one of his finest works, and a composition of great charm and subtlety, if perhaps a shade less immediately accessible than his String Quartet No 3, the so-called "Slavonic" (after its use of predominantly folk idioms).
The performing group on this release, the St. Petersburg String Quartet, was created in 1985 by Leningrad Conservatory graduates (yes, Glazunov's old stomping grounds). Despite their origins, this ensemble is in the modern "American" quartet mold of four equal voices whose balance inclines toward intense musical dialog rather than homogeneity of sound. This approach works very well in the Quartet No. 5, given its concentration on contrapuntal texture. Unfortunately, there are no currently competing versions I'm aware of on CD. An old Melodiya LP featuring the celebrated Shostakovich Quartet offers one of the finest "old style" quartets in this work, with a rich, plumy sound and extraordinary attention to dynamics; still I prefer the SPSQ's more linear reading.
Glazunov's Five Novelettes, composed in 1886, represent his other, more "public" side, offering delight to players and audiences alike without great intellectual effort. Each movement is ostensibly in a distinct nationalistic style: the first "In Spanish Style," the last "In Hungarian Style," and so on. But these are national styles seen through deliberately Russian folk-tinged glasses. While the third movement ("Interlude in the Old Style") does create a series of fine variations on what sounds like a Slavonic chant, the "Orientale" of the second movement is simply a pleasing scherzo in Glazunov's best Borodinesque manner.
Not surprisingly. The SPSQ has slightly more competition, here, and some of it is excellent. The Calvet Sring Quartet delivers a strongly nuanced 1931 reading of the "Olden Style" movement (Lys 298/9), while the Hollywood Quartet (Testament 1061, originally recorded in the 1950s) offers an energized, dynamic reading of all tlve pieces, wonderfully blended. The Shostakovich Quartet's superb tone is formidable again in several movements on another out-of-print LP (which, hopefully, someone will reissue, someday) -surely beauty of tone was on Glazunov's mind, given the expert performers at his disposal in turn-of-the-century Russia. But the SPSQ scores in the "Orientale" movement, whose trio is delivered over a vibratoless drone. I've not heard that interpretation before, but Glazunov, who was supposedly an expert on regional folk music, would probably have delighted in the effect.
All in all, this is a highly attractive CD of two rarely heard but compelling works, performed and recorded (in a closely miked environment) immaculately. Let's hope that the SPSQ continues with further explorations into the world of Glazunov's chamber music, for there are more gems out there.
Barry Brenesal, Fanfare, Issue 25:2 (Nov/Dec 2001)
