557727 bk Boris US 2/11/05 13:42 Page 12 Boris Also available: TCHAIKOVSKY Piano Concerto Clarinet Concerto • Signs of the Zodiac Olga Solovieva, Piano • Anton Prischepa, Clarinet • Yana Ivanilova, Soprano Russian Academy of Music Chamber Orchestra • Timur Mynbaev 8.553126 8.557015 8.557727 12 557727 bk Boris US 2/11/05 13:42 Page 2 Boris Tchaikovsky (1925-1996) Piano Concerto • Clarinet Concerto • Signs of the Zodiac Also available: Widely respected in Russia and praised by figures such realm of abstract instrumental music. Technical as Shostakovich and Mstislav Rostropovich, Boris challenges of one sort or another fascinated him and led Tchaikovsky amassed a formidable body of works, to an ever-fresh source of inspiration. The works on the including four symphonies, four instrumental concertos, present disc offer a varied cross-section of his work. six string quartets, a variety of chamber and orchestral In the Piano Concerto rhythm is used as the music for various ensembles, piano and vocal music, springboard from which all musical ideas and their and an abundance of music for the cinema. manner of development derive. In the outer movements, Tchaikovsky received his musical training at the rhythm also forms the principal structuring device. Each Moscow Conservatory in the years following World of the concerto’s ideas or ‘rhythmotifs’ derives its War II. He received his diploma in 1949, having studied identity from one or more, often short, strongly accented with the leading instrumental composers of the time, patterns. These ideas are treated lyrically and not Shostakovich, Nikolay Myaskovsky, and Vissarion without a significant bravura element that displays Shebalin, bravely refusing to take part in the official Tchaikovsky’s mastery of the instrument. The first condemnation of the much-abused Shostakovich. movement is a lively toccata that is dominated by a Tchaikovsky’s works from the 1940s and 1950s already single, monolithic rhythmic idea: a tenacious ostinato of display a pronounced gift for melody; his earliest throbbing eighth notes (quavers), grouped eight to a bar, compositions reflect an individual style. that are hammered out incessantly. In contrast, the The cultural thaw of the 1960s opened many doors second movement is both tender and sublime. The for Soviet composers in an emerging freer creative husky tones of the solo double bass introduce a gently environment. While some composers were drawn to swaying idea that provides a foil for the main theme avant-garde trends developed in the West, Tchaikovsky, stated on the piano. The movement is cast in ABAB quite independently, began to explore a bolder musical form where the B sections feature a theme based on an 8.557666 language of his own. Yet the lyricism that lies at the inverted version of the mordent figure found in the A base of his musical thinking was undergoing profound sections. The music returns to the soft strains of the metamorphosis. A fresh approach to composition was initial ‘A’ material, but now the piano line is ever so evolving whereby thematic development takes place as sweetly adorned by the violins, which sing in the a kind of “mosaic” of accentuated, declamatory uppermost registers the theme originally given to the utterances. The striking rigidity of these utterances, a solo double bass. A momentary pause marks the return Tchaikovsky hallmark, and their strong rhythmic of the inverted theme (the final B section) where the characteristics are related to similar aspects found in piano, in spare single-notes, continues to render the Russian folk-music. They somehow impart to his music exquisitely sensitive lyricism as it climbs to higher and a distinctly Russian sound while completely avoiding higher registers, eventually vanishing magically off the any traces of an overt folk influence. A corresponding upper end of the keyboard. In the third movement increase in the level of dissonance and the use of bolder Tchaikovsky delivers a compact sonata form in a orchestral colours are also to be noted. What in fact framework of uniformly paced accents. The first theme 8.559043 Tchaikovsky had created was a highly personal, is presented at the outset in a lively galumphing rhythm thoroughly up-to-date musical language capable, as will on the piano. The second theme, pensively undulating in be apparent, of an astonishingly wide range of a stepwise fashion, is heard on piano and strings and is expression. Tchaikovsky’s new style opened up a world adorned by rapid oscillations of a perfect fourth, of formal exploration and expressivity, mostly in the punctuated by a two-note tattoo on the bass drum. At the 8.557727 211 8.557727 557727 bk Boris US 2/11/05 13:42 Page 10 climax all the ideas – galumphing theme, undulating Perhaps the most important vocal work by theme, tattoo, perfect fourth – rally together in a Tchaikovsky is the cantata Signs of the Zodiac. Scored Also available: texturally transparent, splendid moment of synthesis. for solo soprano, strings and harpsichord, it is a deeply The fourth movement, an exuberant rondo, is built from expressive setting that finds Tchaikovsky at the height three themes of vividly contrasting rhythms: a skipping of his lyrical powers. The work takes one verse each theme heard at the outset on French horn, then piano; a from four poets who collectively span two centuries of syncopated theme introduced and most often heard on Russian literature. The poems embrace the common French horn; and chasing immediately after it and at themes of human mortality, eternity, and regeneration times overlapping it, another piano-dominated theme and represent a wide variety of literary styles and frames that pays playful homage to Baroque polyphony. The of reference. They take us from the lyric, philosophical skipping theme and the ‘Baroque’ theme each receive verses of Fyodor Tyutchev (1803 - 1873), to those of the extended pianistic treatment in their subsequent Symbolist Alexander Blok (1880-1921) to the more reappearances in the movement. The first theme is at modern styles of Marina Tsvetaeva (1892-1941) and times reduced to pure skeletal rhythm – in one passage, most recently, Nikolay Zabolotsky (1903-1958). The to a set of lively exchanges between snare drum and bass order of the verses in the cantata preserves this historical drum. The fifth and final movement is based on a short time line. In doing so, a link of human experience idea with a limping gait that is taken through its paces through the ages is established, as is a sense of timeless with a wealth of lyrical possibilities. Like the opening continuity of past, present and future, rather like the movement, its “monorhythmic” construction offers yet constellations of stars in the zodiac itself. another example of Tchaikovsky’s remarkable ability to The instrumental Prelude that opens the work draws take the simplest rhythmic formula and from it build a upon all the musical material that will appear in the dramatic arc of rich and ingratiating emotion. following songs. The ideas flow into each other, Cast in three movements, the modest proportions of fantasia-like, in the same order as they will appear in the Tchaikovsky’s Clarinet Concerto not only cover four settings, an arrangement that sustains the cantata’s 8.553038 colourful ground but offer plenty of virtuosic opportunity overall organization of themes and emotional states. for the soloist. Its melodic style, light scoring (for solo When the ideas do reappear in the songs it also clarinet, strings, three trumpets and timpani) and the reinforces the cyclic timelessness of the cantata’s symmetries imposed by its sectional repeats establish its subject matter. The Prelude displays string writing of affinities with eighteenth-century Baroque and Classical spare texture and extraordinary finesse. Ruminative yet models. From the opening bars of the Moderato the full of expressive energy, its moment-by-moment clarinet sings straight from the heart. Its graceful melody reactivity and rhythmic resilience anticipate the floats above a relaxed pattern of quarter notes (crotchets) elaborate word-painting that will follow in the songs. in the strings in steadily measured triple time. In the The beautifully inspired lyricism in the vocal line that short second movement, Vivace, melodic boundaries are follows, the scrupulously detailed accompaniment, and again shunned as the clarinet alternates with the strings not least the sheer economy of means, are surely the in weaving a rousing wall-to-wall ribbon of sixteenth traits of a masterpiece. notes (semiquavers) with syncopated accompaniment. The first setting features Tyutchev’s poem Silence, 8.557382 This leads to the final Allegro whose main theme, which describes with heart-rending imagery the introduced by the clarinet, is built out of leaping intervals inescapable silence that dwells within the human soul. (rising and falling thirds, descending sixths and The vocal line is dark and strongly expressive, rising sevenths) that contrast with the scalewise material that and falling stepwise toward potent cadences at the end surrounds it. The improvisatory interplay of these ideas of the poem’s three stanzas. The word ‘molchi’ (silence) gives this final rondo a rather jazzy character. returns as the final word of each stanza, and with it, the 8.557727 10 3 8.557727 557727 bk Boris US 2/11/05 13:42 Page 4 soprano’s haunting cadence invariably falls on the pitch the first two verses; and which then throb back and forth Kandidat bylykh stoletiy, You graduate of ages gone, G#, giving the sense each time of returning to an between groups of three and five in the passionate next- Polkovodets novykh let, You strategist of years coming, enduring and eternal truth. The verses of the next song, to-last verse that exhorts “You wild grass from pate to Razum moy! Urodtsy eti – O my Mind! These poor freaks Far Out, by Blok, contemplate the “far out, up there” toe/ Cover me.” The final poem, Signs of the Zodiac, Tol’ko vymysel i bred.