Kirill Mahle

Music in Time of War, the new double-album from pianist Kirill Gerstein, places the music of Komitas, pioneer of ethnomusi- cology and founder of the Armenian national school of music, alongside that of Claude Debussy, a seminal composer in the late 19th and early 20th centuries who held a deep admiration of Komitas’s music. Both composers were profoundly affected by the implosion of their worlds – Komitas by the Armenian Genocide, Debussy by the First World War – and their music reflects a close emotional alignment. Music in Time of War grew from Gerstein’s fascination with music’s power to reflect a narrative. The project will be released as a double CD album and will be accompanied by a hardcover book containing a series of illustrations and detailed essays in three languages commissioned by the pianist.

Contrary heroes: Symphonic poem Mazeppa and the opera fragment Sardanapalo performed by Karabits and the Weimar Staatskapelle. Sardanapalo who prefers wine and concubines to politics and warfare, and Mazeppa, who dies with glory, having endured pain and humiliation: dramatic literary models, impressively set to music by Franz Liszt. Written at the same time, these works represent Liszt’s ideas striving to unite literature and music, on the one hand modernising Italian opera and on the other advancing towards the symphonic poem in his orchestral writing.

Although they were separated due to a period of creative despair which interrupted his work, both the second Piano Concerto and the Moments Musicaux date from Rachmaninov’s early period, during which he was active primarily as a composer rather than a pianist. This explains the character of the second Piano Concerto, which partakes of both chamber music and symphony, despite the dazzling virtuosity of the solo piano part.

The title of ECM's release of works by three composers born in the former Soviet Union perfectly captures the mood of the CD – it is truly mysterious. Although more than half a century separates the first of these pieces from the most recent, they share a sense of otherness that defies easy explanation. The pieces are not so much mysterious in the sense of being eerie (although there are several moments that might raise the hairs on the back of your neck if you were listening alone in the dark); they are unsettling because they raise more questions than they answer.

When Franz Liszt took over the court orchestra in Weimar in 1848, the memory of Goethe, who had previously directed the court theatre, was still venerated. Liszt was therefore Goethe's direct heir at Weimar - albeit as a musician. With his Faust Symphony, which was premiered on the same day as the inauguration of the Goethe and Schiller monument in front of the theatre, psychology made its way into music; Liszt's ambition was the "renewal of music through its more intimate connection with poetry". His Faust Symphony demonstrates the power of sound, of tone painting, to evoke a fantastical, epic and psychological world.

Kirill Petrovich Kondrashin was born on March 6, 1914, in Russia. He graduated from the Moscow Conservatory in 1936, and worked as conductor at the Maly Theatre of Opera and Ballet in Leningrad from 1936-1943. He moved to Moscow in 1943 and worked as the conductor at the Bolshoi Theatre for 16 years. In 1960 Kondrashin was appointed the Artistic Director of the Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra. He conducted the premiere of the Symphony No. 13 "Baby Yar" by Dmitri Shostakovich and Yevgeniy Yevtushenko in 1961. He left the Soviet Union in 1975 and took a post of principal conductor of Amsterdam's Concertgebouw Orchestra in 1979. Kondrashin is known for his numerous recordings of the music of Soviet composers for Melodiya label during the 60's and 70's.