The years 1898-1900 for Elgar saw the composition of The Dream of Gerontius which represented a new style of oratorio in which a continuous musical flow replaced the customary division into separate arias and choruses. He embarked seriously on The Apostles in 1902 and the first performance took place in October of the following year at the Birmingham Festival conducted by Hans Richter. Elgar himself conducted performances in 1914 and again in 1922 in Canterbury Cathedral where this performance was given. As with Handel's Messiah Elgar's work was to have been in three parts, though it soon became apparent that it was going to be far too long for one oratorio, and the third part became the starting point for The Kingdom. This piece grew in its turn and the project became one for three oratorios; the first The Apostles, concerned with the apostles' relationship with the earthly Jesus, the second, The Kingdom, with the period after the crucifixion and the coming of the Holy Ghost, and the third, which never came to be written, on Judgment and the Life Everlasting. Another influence is to be found in Wagner who built up his scores from a pattern of leit-motifs. In his analysis of The Apostles, Jaeger identified and named about sixty such themes, though he came under criticism from Ernest Newman (a leading Wagner authority) for being too obsessional in this respect, and even Elgar himself felt that Jaeger had taken this aspect of the work further than was really justified, since the themes, while being a strong structural element in the music, lacked the immediately identifiable symbolism of Wagner's motifs. The two composers' compositional methods were very different: Wagner completed his libretto first, allocating fragments of melody to particular ideas and incorporating them into the score at significant moments, for Elgar the musical development was pre-eminent he was by nature a symphonic, rather than an operatic composer.

This disc of pieces played by pianist Polina Osetinskaya brings together the music of Nino Rota and Leonid Desyatnikov. An odd combination? Actually, no! Rota lived entirely in the 20th century while Desyatnikov was born in 1955, but what these composers have in common is not just the century they lived in but the way their work challenges what academic music had become. Neither Rota nor Desyatnikov has ever been part of any musical movement, and they have written no theoretical tracts (as was all the rage in the 20th century), but we can still see their music as a riposte to contemporary isolationism, arrogance, and fear.

Mesmerising playing from a young pianist who captures the essence of Grieg’s genius

Let me put my cards on the table and say that Katya Apekisheva is a young pianist who has already achieved artistic greatness. Not even Gilels, in his legendary DG Grieg recital, played more magically or, astonishingly, with greater finesse. How thrilled Irina Zaritskaya, Apekisheva’s teacher and my much-missed jury colleague, would have been if she had lived to hear the fruit of her work with this profoundly gifted artist. A sonority of beguiling warmth and refinement and a rare poetic empathy quickly make you abandon paper and pencil and listen mesmerised as Apekisheva captures the very essence of Grieg’s genius. Here, in her mixed programme, she tells you with an often painfully beautiful and unforced eloquence of how Grieg’s romantic temperament was easily clouded by depression and unease, of the way, for example in “Homesickness” and “Vanished Days”, a heartbreaking state of mind is only temporarily modified by memories of happier times. In the Aria from the Holberg Suite she is deeply sensitive to the way Grieg’s love and respect for the 18th century is coloured by a near-Franckian chromaticism and dark introspection. These works and everything else on this beautifully recorded album suggest an artistic fervour and commitment given to very few in any generation.

The sense of the Lyric Pieces as Grieg’s confessional diary is everywhere in Apekisheva’s recital, an inwardness and vision less evident in Daniel Propper’s bracing recording of four books of the Lyric Pieces. Nimble-fingered and musicianly, this Swedish-Viennese pianist, who now makes his home in Paris, shows Grieg’s art evolving from simple beginnings into a world of increasing complexity and harmonic richness. His “Little Bird” (from Op 43) blithely chirrups in a manner far removed from Messiaen’s more spiritual feathered friends, and his way with “Erotic” from the same book achieves a fine sense of how outward contentment abruptly changes to emotional instability. In “Butterfly” he hardly matches Eileen Joyce’s incomparable nuance and vivacity (Testament), yet these finely recorded performances are an admirable antidote to all possible sentimentality.

-- Bryce Morrison, Gramophone [9/2008]

Includes nocturne(s) for piano by Frédéric Chopin. Soloist: Israela Margalit.

Evgeny Samoyloff writes: “Mussorgsky’s From Memories of Childhood cycle was never completed by the composer; in fact, he wrote only the first two pieces: ‘The Nurse and I’ and ‘The First Punishment’. An earlier cycle-to-be, entitled Children’s Games and featuring ‘Corners’ as its opening piece, was similarly never completed. I have taken the liberty of selecting what I believe to be the best of Mussorgsky’s miniature pieces – those that appear most complete – and of joining them to the primary cycle of Childhood Memories. I was guided by the music’s imagery and by its ‘childhood’ essence (as if seen through the eyes of a child), and I have endeavored to compile the set following the principles of contrast and artistic integrity, as well as those of tonal and architectural balance. This is how this cycle of eight pieces came into being, and I hope that it has a right to exist and to achieve widespread appeal.”

This new release from Vitaly Vatulya is an album of contemporary Saxophone and fusion with electronics. Internationally acclaimed soloist, Vitaly Vatulya became a prize-winner of more than twenty national and international competitions, among which are “Delphic Games”, one of the most prestigious competition in Russia, First prize at the International Saxophone Competition 'Marco Fiorindo' in Italy, International Saxophone Competition in Nova Gorica (Slovenia). Vitaly Vatulya performs as a soloist and an active ensemble player, gives concerts in Europe, Russia and abroad. He performs with the leading Russian and European orchestras, including the Moscow State Symphony Orchestra, Russian State Symphony Orchestra, St. Petersburg State Capella Symphony Orchestra, Slovenian Philharmonic Orchestra, Kosovo Philharmonic and others. Vitaly is a soloist of the St. Petersburg House of Music. In 2018 Vitaly joined pedagogical team of 19th Habanera Academy of Saxophone and participated at the 19th “Saxophone in movement" Festival in Poitiers, France. Vitaly’s performances can often be heard on the Russian and European radio and TV.

STRING QUARTETS 1-3

Recorded for the first time on one album, this release features Hindemith’s complete works for violin and piano and the rarely recorded Kleine Sonata for Viola D’amore and piano. Hindemith’s reputation as a master composer, viola virtuoso and dominant pedagogue- who, being able to play practically every standard instrument (and a few non-standard ones), expected the same from his students- has tended to obscure the fact that he first came to attention not as a composer or violist but as a violinist. Roman Mints has had a lifelong love of the works of Paul Hindemith, which began when he was a young violinist, studying in Moscow in the 1980s. He says “This music, written not just before I was born but closer to the time of my grandparents’ birth, felt completely contemporary, and daringly advanced in its sound- and not just to me, as it turns out: 30 years on, Hindemith is still regarded by concert programmers as too difficult for the wider public. I put Sonata in D on the stand. I was gripped by the first subject, constructed from seconds and sevenths, marked to be played ‘with stony defiance.’ I was never the same again and he became my window into contemporary music.”

Marcelo Bratke continues with Volume 3 of his series devoted to the complete solo piano works of Heitor Villa-Lobos.

"...Villa-Lobos gained significant prestige in the Paris of the 1920s, the period of his boldest and most creative work, before returning to a more orderly approach in the 1930s. In 1928, when the publisher Max Eschig commissioned a few works for students of the celebrated professor and pianist Marguerite Long at the Paris Conservatory, Villa-Lobos wrote one of his most charming and most original compositions, Francette et Pià. He imagined a little Indian boy called Pià befriending a little French girl, Francette. There is a “barbarian” mood from the beginning, with syncopated jazz à la Revue Nègre bringing in French children’s songs such as Au Clair de la Lune or Marlbrough s’en va-t-en guerre, reflections of Brazilian themes, the Marseillaise, and many other references scored in miraculously straightforward language." - Quartz Records, (From the album liner notes.)

The debut album of calm and meditative masterpieces from Russian organist Svetlana Berezhnaya

This release is dedicated to one of the most esteemed musical practices of the Renaissance: the art of accompanying the voice with the viola da gamba. Cantare alla viola (singing with a viol) is the name for this practice, which was quite common at the time. The art of this practice lies in the ability of the “viola” player to arrange and play madrigals to accompany one single voice, as a lutenist or vihuela player commonly does. Cantar alla Viola has careful selected some of the finest pieces of the Italian Renaissance in order to illustrate the intimate and skillful musical practice of Cantare alla viola. The pieces vary from the subtle and transparent trecento 2-voice ballades of Magister Piero and Andrea da Firenze played on the viella, to the exquisite and virtuous madrigals for one soprano by Luzzascho Luzasschi, accompanied by the viola da gamba. The Renaissance villanelle and 3-voice madrigals by Luca Marenzio and Costanzo Festa, are adapted for the polyphonic playing of two different bowed vihuelas. Solo pieces have been added to the release to show the instrumental practice on a bowed vihuela through arrangements of lute and keyboard pieces by composers such as Marco Antonio Cavazzoni or Francesco da Milano.

The piano reductions for four hands of Stravinsky's ballets Petrushka and The Rite of Spring are not mere arrangements, but the original source out of which the orchestral scores were fashioned. Here, they are played winningly by Katya Apekisheva and Charles Owen.

Barber's aunt was the most celebrated contralto of the day, and her husband Sidney Homer wrote a number of highly successful songs. Barber explained that "writing songs just seemed a natural thing to do." Barber had a fine baritone voice, studying singing as well as composition and piano at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia. Throughout his career, Barber's instinct for vocal shaping would inform his output; half of his published compositions are vocal, and even his instrumental works frequently possess a lyrical, cantabile quality. Furthermore, Barber's partner, Gian Carlo Menotti (1911-2007), was also a skilful composer of vocal music, and the pair undeniably influenced one another. In 1964, Menotti argued: "There is a certain indolence towards the use of the voice today, a tendency to treat the voice instrumentally, as if composers feared that its texture is too expressive, too human". This emotive humanity is not something Barber himself shied away from; on the contrary, as both composer and lyricist he was able to cut to the heart of a subject with both concision and beauty. Gweneth-Ann Jeffers is among the best of today's young British singers. She is noted for her commanding voice and vivid personality. She has already been heard in an exceptionally wide range of repertoire including leading roles for Welsh National Opera and Oper Köln as well as concert engagements in Britain, Europe, Australia and Japan. In the 07/08 season, she made several role débuts: Gutrune in Götterdämmerung at the BBC Proms with Donald Runnicles; the title roles in Tosca at the Teatro São Carlos in Lisbon and the title role in Porgy and Bess for the Basel Chamber Orchestra and the Macedonian Philharmonic. She also performed Messiaen's Harawi as part of the Southbank Centre's composer centenary celebrations 'From the Canyons to the Stars' and at the 2008 BBC Proms.

Leonid Desyatnikov is one of the most respected Russian composers of our time. He first made a reputation with a number of film scores, then later achieved greater worldwide fame when the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow premiered his controversial opera The Children of Rosenthal. He is a graduate of Leningrad Conservatory, where he studied composition and instrumentation. He has written four operas, several cantatas, and numerous vocal and instrumental works. This release includes the world premiere recording of his 1992 chamber work Sketches to Sunset, as well as his 2000 work Russian Seasons for Violin, Voice, and Strings.

Violin Sonatas

A collection of classical greats conjuring up the thoughts of Water & Fire.

BACH Suite in a, BWV 818a. Capriccio on the Departure of a Beloved Brother, BWV 992. 3-Part Sinfonias, BWV 787–801. Prelude and Fugue in b, BWV 544 (arr. Liszt) • Jacob Katsnelson (pn) • QUARTZ 2084 (59:40)


At first I couldn’t place him, but I knew that somewhere I’d met Jacob Katsnelson before. Then it hit me. He was the pianist who accompanied Maxim Rysanov in a couple of numbers on a two-disc Onyx set of Brahms’s chamber works in viola transcriptions, reviewed in Fanfare 32: 5. Frankly, my focus was so centered on Rysanov that I didn’t pay much attention to Katsnelson at the time.


He was born in Moscow in 1976, entered the Moscow Conservatory in 1993, and since 2001 has taught at the Moscow State Tchaikovsky Conservatory. He has soloed throughout Russia, as well as in Austria, Germany, Spain, and France, done the competition thing, won prizes, participated in festivals, and yada yada. By now it’s an old and familiar story: Gifted youngster enters conservatory, wows competition judges and talent scout, lands recording contract, and makes it big on the international concert scene.


Sometimes, the big splash dissipates in receding ripples on the pond; other times, not. I can’t say what will happen with Katsnelson in the long term; I can only register my reaction to his playing in the here and now, and that reaction is overwhelmingly positive. This is one of the most satisfying Bach recitals on piano to come my way in a long time.


To begin with, as I’ve made clear in the past, when I listen to Bach on piano, I don’t want the artist to apologize for the instrument by playing it as if it were a harpsichord. There’s no hint of that with Katsnelson. He uses the full range of the piano’s dynamic, sustaining, and expressive potential. And his instrument, amusingly credited in the booklet as “a regular piano”—I presume to distinguish it from a fortepiano—is a concert grand, model E-272, from Bayreuth maker Steingraeber & Son, a magnificent specimen if I may say so.


Further research on the company’s website reveals a number of interesting details and specifications about this new instrument: “Unique features include the unusual shape of the sound-reflecting rims, the combined star-shaped and half-timbered braces, and the ‘incredibly agreeable’ (Cyprien Katsaris) touch. The most uncommon feature, however, is the shape of the soundboard in the treble. The resonating space was newly reconstructed, based on the classical relationship between [short] string length and resonating space. Steingraeber strings have 27 percent less wood mass to penetrate than comparable instruments by other piano builders! The result is a tone that is present and singing, even in softer passages.”


The part about softer passages is true. Katsnelson’s pianissimos diminuendo to a whisper. But there’s no compromise in fullness of tone, resonance, or raw power. The recording, made in 2009 at the Steingraeber studio, could serve as a standard against which recorded reproduction of piano sound is measured. Intimate, as in a private music room, yet acoustically alive and vibrant, every subtlety of the instrument’s complex palette is captured and projected with amazing lifelike presence. It stands to reason, of course, that a piano manufacturing firm would design and engineer a perfect acoustic space in which to conduct painstaking measurements and tests of its products. This is the high-tech world of attaching scopes and computers to the sounding board and of analyzing streams of ones and zeros. In this case, it worked wonders.


All would be for naught, of course, if Katsnelson didn’t know his way around Bach, but he does. There are some performance idiosyncrasies, like the tendency to roll chords at cadences, that purists may find objectionable, but in general Katsnelson’s approach is not of the romantic persuasion. He avoids grand ritards and other sins of exaggerated point-making. He does, however, as noted, make full use of the piano’s dynamic range and sustaining power, which means that he crescendos and decrescendos and applies pedals where it makes musical sense to do so. The result is a transparency of voicing that allows every strand of Bach’s counterpoint to be heard with pellucid precision.


For lack of a better term, I’d describe Katsnelson’s tempos as temperate. Fast movements are set within sane ranges of the metronome’s upper regions, an indication that Katnelson is not interested in promoting himself as a virtuosic marvel at the expense of Bach. And slow movements are not pondered and pestered to the point of prostration, an indication that Katnelson does not approach Bach with an attitude of affected reverence that can come across as so much pious posturing. No, Katsnelson’s Bach is refreshingly straightforward and superbly executed. This gets a very strong recommendation.


FANFARE: Jerry Dubins

The Russian pianist REM Urasin is most closely associated with Chopin, winning numerous prizes and performing every piece the composer wrote over the course of 11 concerts in 2009/2010. Here, though, he turns his attention to his native repertoire, transforming 15 Shostakovich preludes into brilliantly astringent showcases for cello and piano and transcribing 10 Rachmaninov songs in a similar manner. The contrast between the agitated, angular energy of the preludes and the richly melodic warmth of the romances could hardly be more marked. Urasin and cellist Boris Andrianov make a formidable duo, playing with rigorous intensity - particularly in the crazily satiric Prelude No 5 - and a touchingly languid lyricism.

RACHMANINOFF Moments Musicaux, op. 16. MEDTNER Piano Sonata in g. LYAPUNOV Études d’exécution transcendante: Berceuse; Ronde des sylphs; Tempête & • Chisato Kusunoki (pn) • QUARTZ 2089 (75:13)


& SCRIABIN Fantasy in b


One of my fellow Fanfare critics made reference, a few issues back, to the “pretty young things playing Chopin” being pushed by DG. One might be tempted to say that Chisato Kusunoki is a “pretty young thing playing Rachmaninoff and Scriabin,” but she has the gift of exquisite phrasing and imparting a deep feeling for the music to her listeners. Certainly, if she is capable of such a feat through the cold impartiality of a CD, she can also do it in live performance.


Listen, for instance, to the magical way she shapes and colors the third of the six Moments Musicaux, or the smoldering intensity of the fourth ( Presto ). Kusunoki not only knows the notes, as all pianists nowadays do, but she understands what to do between “the piano here and the forte there,” as Toscanini used to say. In short, Kusunoki has a clear view of the music’s structure as well as its color.


Kusunoki’s mastery of Russian music, in fact, is a constant thread throughout this recital. In the Medtner sonata, strong emotion and flurries of counterpoint intermix and complement each other, almost as if the composer were trying to reconcile his twin loves, Bach and Beethoven. Cast in one movement, the music changes mood abruptly and there are several dead stops in it, as if Medtner were trying to decide where to go next, yet the motives are repeated or altered in such a way that a sense of development is created and continuity maintained. At one point, flurries of rapid triplets alternate with slow-moving half notes as if the composer were trying to determine his current mood as much as the listener. At another, he assigns the melody to the left hand while the right plays flurries of 16ths, and occasional tone clusters blur the tonality. Amazingly, Kusunoki is with him every step of the way; listening to her performance, one would almost think that this music reflected her moods and her state of mind.


There is, perhaps, somewhat less drama—or perhaps I should say, fewer contrasting emotions—in her playing of the Scriabin Fantasy. I think, perhaps, that Kusunoki is viewing this music as typical post-Romanticism when, in fact, she should be exploring the mystical quality the music suggests and evokes. In other words, her performance is too outgoing, not personal enough. It is a rare lapse in an otherwise excellent recital, but I hasten to add that it is merely a lapse of musical approach, not a glib or unaffecting performance.


Three of Lyapunov’s 12 etudes close out this recital, and here Kusunoki has judged their musical mood well. Berceuse receives a splendidly warm and intimate performance, both playful in feeling and caressing in spinning out the musical line. Ronde des sylphs could, perhaps, be imparted with a shade lighter touch than Kusunoki gives it, yet her coruscating 16ths have the right angular rhythm and produce their desired effect, and in Tempête she is solidly in her element, caught up as much in the onrush of dazzling figures as the listener.


Despite a bevy of outstanding versions of the Rachmaninoff pieces (including Berman, Ashkenazy, Dejan Lazic, and Ruth Laredo) and competing versions of the Medtner sonata by Gilels and Hamelin, Kusunoki definitely holds her own. In the Lyapunov, I prefer Louis Kentner’s famous and fabulous 1949 recording, currently available on Appian 5620.


A word to the producer of Kusunoki’s records: Please stop using the buzzwords “to great acclaim” when mentioning where she has performed, and if you are going to quote a review from a newspaper or magazine like the London Times, please use the critic’s name. Every young artist nowadays plays “to great acclaim,” even if that great acclaim only comes from a stringer who was assigned the concert because the artist in question was unknown to the principal critic. If you give us the names of the critics who praise pianist X or violinist Y, and we recognize that name as a well-respected critic we can trust, it means much more to us.


Otherwise, this is a superb recital, superbly played and recorded.


FANFARE: Lynn René Bayley

CHRISTMAS SPIRIT

sCORDAtura is an Italian concept that implies the tuning of strings in different combinations through which the instrument receives a special sound, rich in colours and resonant in certain tones. CORDA, means "string" and comes from the Latin word CHORDA, which according to Aegidius of Zamora, a theorist from the 13th century, comes from CORS, meaning "heart". The action of the string on the instrument symbolizes the beating or the pulse of the CORS, being the motor that gives it life. Originally from Alicante, the viola da gambist and cellist, Fernando Marín has specialized in bowed instruments of the Renaissance and Baroque periods, historical interpretation and chamber music. He studied at the Conservatory of Oviedo, the International School of Music and Fine Arts in Prague, the Conservatory of Music in Cologne and at the Royal Conservatory of Brussels. Quartz released his first solo CD, eVIOLution, which traces the origins of the viola da gamba. He has also written articles on musical rhetoric and gut strings, which have been published by Nassarre, a journal for musicology, and an article on ornamentation and improvisation for the magazine Quodlibet. As a result of his research he has invented his own historical gut strings, which he has patented.

Lisa Oshima was born in Tokyo, Japan and began studying the violin at the age of four. She graduated with a soloist diploma from the Toho Gakuen School of Music college where she studied with Kenji Kobayashi. She continued her studies with Dr. Felix Andrievsky as a postgraduate at the Royal College of Music where she was awarded the Yehudi Menuhin Award, Ian Stoutzker Prize, and Isolde Menges Prize, and graduated with distinction in 2000. She has won numerous competitions including the 18th International Violin Competition ‘Premio Rodolfo Lipizer,” and the 20th Viotti International Music competition Valsesia. For her new release, she has brought together some of Prokofiev’s greatest compositions for violin. Each and every work on this recording has been chosen by the artist for very personal reasons- not only to show the multifaceted versatility of Prokofiev, but also because of the powerful emotions they summon. The artist writes of these selections, “These works by Prokofiev never fail to grab my heart. I hope you will enjoy…”

Sibelius: Piano Works Vol. 1

A delightful program of Lullabies put together by Polina Osetinskaya with her young family in mind. This is a program that lulls the listener into dreams and daydreams. You can take a trip from the early 20th century, to the 19th, then to the 21st and back to the 19th and experience Batagov and Liszt suddenly becoming contemporaries with Schumann; Tchaikovsky and Desyatnikov seemingly becoming blood-brothers!

DESYATNIKOV Return 1. Du côté de chez Swan 2. Variations on the Obtaining of a Dwelling 3. Wie der alte Leiermann 4. The Leaden Echo 5. Moscow Nights: Theme 6 • 1 Dmitri Bulgakov (ob); 1 Anton Dressler (cl); 1,4,5,6 Roman Mints, 1,6 Anna Panina (vn); 1 Maxim Rysanov, 5 Serj Poltavsky (va); 1 Kristine Blaumane, 3 Boris Andrianov, 5 Evgeny Rumyantsev, 5 Petr Kondrashin (vc); 2,3 Alexei Goribol, 2 Leonid Desyatnikov, 4 Jacob Katsnelson (pn); 5 William Purefoy (ct); 5 Pavel Stepin (db); 5 Fedor Lednev, cond; 6 Homecoming Strings • QUARTZ QTZ 2087 (63:23 Text and Translation)


Don’t take this as gospel, but I remember reading some years ago that of all the musicians who ever lived, half are alive now. That must hold true for composers, too, because, despite my having heard music by more than 10,000 of them, here is yet another who is new to me. Leonid Desyatnikov is quite prolific, having written a symphony, four operas, several cantatas, as well as numerous vocal and instrumental compositions. He has also been quite active in the film world, where he has won several awards.


Desyatnikov seeks the impossible ideal of uniting ages, traditions, and cultures into an integral worldview. To that end, one hears influences from many musical traditions, some as far afield as those of India and Japan. He describes his style as “the emancipation of consonance, the transformation of the banal, minimalism with a human face.” I concur with this assessment, especially if he means by “minimalism with a human face” that his repetition stops well short of the ad nauseam repetition that curses most Minimalists. Desyatnikov knows the musically effective limits of repetition, and rarely exceeds those limits. As a consequence, I enjoyed this CD far more than most others that have even a hint of Minimalism attending them. He enjoys contrasting simple melodic lines with more static and dissonant interludes. There is often an icy “northern” feeling to his music that reminds me of the music of certain Finnish composers, such as Rautavaara and Sallinen. At other times, there is a sense of nostalgia, akin to a longing to return home. Indeed, mood-setting seems to be paramount in importance to this composer (surely a sine qua non for anyone writing film music).


The CD opens with one of Desyatnikov’s more recent (2006) works, Return. It is based upon several ostinati, and meshed with the melancholy that pervades much Russian and Soviet music. In this work, there is an evolution of thematic material toward a final statement based on gagaku , the ancient ceremonial music of Japan. This is done through expounding a particular note sequence in the tempered scale (via the Western oboe, clarinet, and strings) that finds its resolution in the untempered gagaku source.


Du côté de chez Swan for two pianos is based on “The Swan” from Saint-Saëns’s Carnival of the Animals. It begins with an ostinato in the upper register of one of the pianos, below which a series of rhythmically complex figures is heard. All of this gradually transmogrifies into the well-known tune. Thereafter, fragments of the tune or its accompaniment are heard in various guises, along with new material. The whole effect might be described as what one might obtain if one were to somehow assemble two different jigsaw puzzles together in a random fashion and view the resulting picture. The composer admits to “traces of fascination” with Ligeti, and indeed, the structure of the work does seem to owe something to the Austro-Hungarian master. I hasten to say that the piece works much better than my description might imply.


Variations on the Obtaining of a Dwelling for cello and piano is based, according to the notes, on the music of Joseph Haydn, specifically his “Farewell” Symphony. However, I also hear influence of Bach in this piece, especially in its opening, which evokes memories of his cello suites. Part of my perception might derive from the utterly pure sound and intonation produced by cellist Boris Andrianov, who approaches the work’s opening in a “period” performance style. Indeed, I would be delighted to hear this cellist perform the Bach solo suites. The simple, unaffected opening of the work eventually yields to more impassioned lines in the cello, culminating in some impressive climaxes, where the soloist floats on a sea of arpeggios. Along the way, the composer imitates the Indian tabla through pizzicati in the cello. The title of the piece suggests its program, that the composer has a place whence to go out into the world, and a place to come back home.


Wie der alte Leiermann was commissioned by Gidon Kremer for the Schubert Today project. Desyatnikov defines the genre of the piece as “not variations, not a fantasia, not a paraphrase. This is a commentary.” The commentary comes on the closing Lied of Schubert’s Winterreise, “Der Leiermann,” which is itself a static and rather proto-minimalist piece in its masterly depiction of the chill of winter. The composer invites the auditors of this piece to guess his reference therein “to Kremer’s exclusive repertoire.” I have no idea to what in particular he is referring here, but I can tell you that there are strong overtones of the D-Minor Partita of Bach, even down to the opening triad of its famous Chaconne. However, I cannot imagine that anyone could claim the Bach sonatas and partitas as his “exclusive repertoire.” I certainly don’t believe that Kremer would, despite the fact that his recording of these works ranks among the best.


The Leaden Echo is a product of 1991. It is a setting for countertenor and instruments of the eponymous poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins, and is dedicated to the St. Petersburg art scholar Arkady Ippolitov. Employing simple melodic lines and static underpinnings, the work maintains a Pre-Raphaelite aestheticism with its cult of beauty. Soloist William Purefoy has a beautiful vocal instrument, although it has more of a mezzo-soprano quality than what I usually envision to be the countertenor sound.


Balancing the opening work on the CD, the closing main theme from the film Moscow Nights evokes a sense of nostalgia and melancholy throughout its brief duration.


All the performances on this disc are exemplary and present the music in splendid fashion. Leonid Desyatnikov has something remarkable to say in his music, and I hope that many will afford themselves the opportunity to hear him say it.


FANFARE: David DeBoor Canfield