Rozhdestvensky Tchaikovsk

The outstanding conductor, teacher, pianist and wonderful storyteller Gennady Rozhdestvensky's another unique talent is to discover unknown and forgotten pages of music of different periods. Many of his concerts turn into a fascinating journey of unexplored monuments of Russian and European music. This double album features unfamiliar compositions played four hands by Rozhdestvensky and the remarkable pianist Viktoria Postnikova with Rozhdestvensky playing three (!) instruments – harpsichord, organ and piano. Apart from better known sonatas by Mozart and a fantasia by Schubert, the listeners will discover organ fugues composed by Schubert and a friend of his, a famous composer and conductor of his time Franz Lachner, a harpsichord sonata by Johann Christoph Friedrich Bach (Johann Sebastian's ninth son), eight-hand compositions by the Czech classic Bedřich Smetana, and unfairly forgotten arrangements of Russian folk songs by the founder of The Five Mily Balakirev.

Alfred Schnittke's Second Concerto Grosso is a different creature than his First. While the 1977 Concerto Grosso No. 1 for 2 Violins, Strings and Keyboards is a lithe, vicious, often comical work, the Second, finished five years later, is a weightier affair. The soloists are now violin and cello; the Baroque band is now a full orchestra with electric guitar, drum kit, and brake drum; there are four large movements rather than six smaller ones; the entire work is imbued with an air of sincere tragedy, albeit with mud on its shoes. Schnittke dedicated the work to its premiere soloists, husband-and-wife duo Oleg Kagan (violin) and Natalia Gutman (cello); famed for their flawless ensemble, the couple inspired in Schnittke a musical air of companionship – a single soul in two instruments.

Dutch composer Matthijs Vermeulen’s wildly complex and inventive music resists easy classification, and yet it does not really do his work justice to say it is an amalgam of Berg, Varèse, Ives, Hartmann, Pettersson, and others. But in effect that is just what it is–an inscrutable, polymelodic kitchen-sink approach to composition. And it is no less fascinating as a result. At once relentless, frantic, fierce, and desolate, Vermeulen’s compositions were barely performed during his own lifetime (1888-1967), and he did not help his cause by systematically estranging himself from the musical establishment (Mengelberg, among others).

Immensely influential, the remarkable Symphonie fantastique was composed while Hector Berlioz was suffering an intense and unreciprocated passion for the Irish actress Harriet Smithson. Its autobiographical tale describes a young musician’s opium-poisoned nightmares of jealous despair and fatal justice following the murder of his beloved. Berlioz wrote a second movement cornet solo into a subsequent revision of the score, here included as an optional extra. He wed his sweetheart actress but, recuperating in Nice, wrote Le corsaire after the final break-up of their marriage.

Clear, precise music featuring rhythmic refinement as free as it is polished, with vibrations that are, in the final analysis, more morbid than conquering, a series of enchantments idealising the violin as the charming bard of the inexpressible. A new form of Expressionism and a timeless challenge for performers.

After Tchaikovsky, but with Glazunov, and before Stravinsky and the rest, Nikolai Tcherepnin (1873-1945) made a not so quiet contribution to the continuing development of the Russian ballet. But he was quite an overshadowed figure, in large part due to the success of Stravinsky & his son, Alexander Tcherepnin and to modernist trends that became prevalent by the early Twentieth Century (Nikolay’s music remains rooted in the sound-worlds and mannerisms of Tchaikovsky, Massenet, and Faure). But the language of "Narcisse et Echo" (1911) and telling subtleties in its orchestral resources point to Ravel's "Daphnis et Chloe" written a year later.

…Music of radiant splendour, full of affirmation… With Janice Watson, Della Jones, Martyn Hill and Donald Maxwell as soloists, the LSO Chorus in marvellous voice and glowing orchestral playing, the Missa takes its rightful place alongside its illustrious.

This old Erato disc features one of Alfred Schnittke's most popular works in excellent performance along with, as far as I know, the only recording of a late work. Gennady Rozhdestvensky leads the London Sinfonietta, with Viktoria Postnikova as piano soloist, and the composer's widom Irina Schnittke appearing on the piano four-hand work. Note that this disc has been reissued in Warner's budget line Apex, so that's a better place to hear this music.