RODION SHCHEDRIN, PIANO Cassadó International Cello Competition in Florence
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NI 5831 Raphael Wallfi sch is one of the most celebrated cellists performing on the international stage. He was born in London into a family of distinguished musicians, his mother the cellist Anita Lasker-Wallfi sch and his father the pianist Peter Wallfi sch. At an early age, Raphael was greatly inspired by hearing Zara SHCHEDRIN Nelsova play. He was subsequently guided by a succession of fi ne teachers including Amaryllis Fleming, Amadeo Baldovino, Derek Simpson and the great RAPHAEL WALLFISCH, CELLO Russian cellist Gregor Piatigorsky. At the age of twenty-four he won the Gaspar RODION SHCHEDRIN, PIANO Cassadó International Cello Competition in Florence. Since then he has enjoyed a world-wide career playing. Teaching is one of Raphael Wallfi sch’s passions. He is in demand as a teacher all over the world holding the position of professor of cello in Switzerland at the Zürich Winterthur Konservatorium and in Germany at the Hochschule Mainz. Raphael has recorded nearly every major work for his instrument. His extensive discography on EMI, Chandos, Black Box, ASV, Naxos and Nimbus explores both the mainstream concerto repertoire and countless lesser-known works by Dohnanyi, Respighi, Barber, Hindemith and Martinu, as well as Richard Strauss, Dvorak, Kabalevsky and Khachaturian. He has recorded a wide range of British cello concertos, including works by MacMillan, Finzi, Delius, Bax, Bliss, Britten, Moeran, Walton and Kenneth Leighton. Britain’s leading composers have worked closely with Raphael Wallfi sch, many having written works especially for him. These include Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, Kenneth Leighton, James MacMillan, John Metcalf, Robert Simpson, Robert Saxton, Roger Smalley, Giles Swayne, John Tavener and Adrian Williams. Raphael Wallfi sch plays on an instrument made by Adolphe Gand in Paris 1849 for Auguste Tolbecque, dedicatee of Saint-Saëns’ fi rst Cello Concerto. Cello Sonata Ancient Melodies of Russian Folk-song 12 NI 5831 Rodion Shchedrin Rodion Shchedrin was born in 1932 in Moscow into a musical family: his father was a composer and teacher of music theory. He studied at the Moscow Choral Music for Cello & Piano School and graduated from the Moscow Conservatory in 1955 where he studied Raphael Wallfi sch, cello - Rodion Shchedrin, piano composition and piano. His fi rst major works were written in his early twenties. Never a member of the Communist Party, after the collapse of the Soviet regime Shchedrin was able to participate more fully in musical life around the world and now divides his time between Munich and Moscow. The ancient melodies of Russian folk-songs (2007) 17.53 A virtuoso pianist, Shchedrin has often performed his own works, which 1 I Lento in poco rubato [no.75] 3.14 include fi ve piano concertos, sonatas and a series of 24 preludes and fugues for 2 II Allegro, ma non troppo [no.61] 2.10 3 solo piano. For over a decade he spent lot of his time and energies as Head of III Maestoso [no.6] 3.57 the Russian Federation of the Union of Composers having succeeded its founder, 4 IV Adagietto [no.14] 4.27 Dmitri Shostakovich, at the older composer’s request. 5 V Moderato [no.11] 4.05 In his opera Dead Souls (after Gogol) and the ballet Anna Karenina (after Sonate (1996) 34.24 Tolstoy), he introduced classics of Russian literature to musical theatre. All were 6 I Allegretto 13.35 performed at the Bolshoi Theatre, making Shchedrin the fi rst composer to have 7 II Moderato 9.20 had seven works staged there in its 200-year history. Shchedrin`s choral works, set 8 III Sostenuto assai 11.29 to texts by Russian poets, are widely performed, as are his two symphonies and fi ve concertos for orchestra. 9 In the style of Albéniz (1959) 4.36 0 In 1992 President Boris Yeltsin awarded Shchedrin the Russian State Prize for Quadrille – from the opera Nicht nur liebe (Not love alone) 6.57 his work The Sealed Angel. Shchedrin has succeeded in fusing traditional and new Arranged by Grigory Singer forms by using every contemporary compositional technique including aleatoric and serial. His attraction to Russian folklore and folk music, Russian poetry and Total playing time 63.53 literature, is strongly evident in his oeuvre, making him a pre-eminently Russian composer with a voice that nevertheless speaks to all humankind. Since 1989 Shchedrin has been a member of the Berlin Academy of Arts. Cover photograph © istock.com Recorded by Nimbus Records at Wyastone, 25 May, 2007 © 2008 Wyastone Estate Limited 2008 Wyastone Estate Limited 11 NI 5831 NI 5831 One of the most signifi cant and inspiring musical experiences of my life has been Rodion Konstantinovich Shchedrin was born in Moscow on 16 December 1932: working with Rodion Shchedrin on his works for cello. Our fi rst collaboration was his father was a violinist and composer who taught at the Moscow Conservatory, over Shchedrin’s orchestration of Prokoviev’s Cinq Mélodies in a version for solo where Shchedrin studied from 1950 to 1955 (after preliminary study at the Moscow cello, completed in the style of Prokoviev’s own orchestration of the second mélodie. Choral School) and where he himself taught from 1965 to 1969. His own teachers I subsequently suggested to Rodion that it would be wonderful if he would write a included Yuri Shaporin and Yakov Flier. He succeeded Shostakovich, at the older set of fi ve pieces for cello and piano based on Russian folk melodies: I was hoping composer’s request, as the chairman of the Russian Union of Composers and headed to add to the repertoire of such pieces by earlier composers, Manuel de Falla and it for ten years, although he was never offi cially a member of the Communist Party. Robert Schumann being particularly successful examples. I really didn’t expect Shchedrin has developed a reputation as a politically independent, cosmopolitan he would take my idea seriously, and when the pieces arrived in the post several creative artist. Since the break-up of the USSR he has divided his time between months later, I was both amazed and delighted! Moscow and Munich, being elected a member of the Berlin Academy of Arts in And so it was that Rodion agreed to play, and record, these new pieces with me, 1989. Since 1958 he has been married to Maya Plisetskaya, the famous prima ballerina adding to the CD his great Cello Sonata and two highly effective and amusing short superstar of the Bolshoi Ballet, and has written many works for her, including transcriptions. Rodion is a musician of absolute conviction, one who knows exactly the brilliant Carmen Suite, probably Shchedrin’s most famous work although it is what he wants to say through music of great intensity mixed with wit, sarcasm and founded on the music of Bizet. They are joint directors of the International Maya even irreverence! He is also a powerful pianist. I will always remember the day of Plisetskaya and Rodion Shchedrin Foundation, set up in Mainz in 2000. recording with Rodion: we managed to record all four pieces in about six hours. Shchedrin has worked in most media and his output includes operas (notably Playing with hardly a break, and with intense focus, he often demanded what Lolita after the novel by Vladimir Nabokov and Dead Souls after Gogol) and ballets seemed like more than my maximum, but it worked! During our performances I (such as Anna Karenina after Tolstoy): as these examples suggest he has turned understood that he was extending my range, and pushing me further than I might principally to the classics of Russian literature for theatrical inspiration. His have gone alone! choral work The Sealed Angel, after a story by Nikolai Leskov, was awarded the In addition to the idiomatic and brilliant orchestration of Prokofi ev’s Cinq Russian State Prize by Boris Yeltsin in 2003. Shchedrin’s output also includes three Mélodies, I have also played and recorded Rodion’s highly dramatic and atmospheric symphonies, many concertos (including fi ve piano concertos and fi ve concertos for Parabola Concertante for cello, strings and timpani (NI5816, with the Southbank orchestra) and numerous piano and chamber works. Sinfonia under Simon Over). I love the concise and direct quality of his music, and Shchedrin’s attraction to Russian folklore and folk music, as well as its poetry his marvelously idiomatic writing for the cello. Having close and friendly contact and literature, is strongly evident in his oeuvre. He scored his fi rst notable success with Rodion has been of the greatest help in shaping my interpretations of his with a four-act ballet, The Little Hump-Backed Horse, (Konyek-Gorbunov) composed in music. 1955 and fi rst produced in 1960, but he confi rmed and consolidated an international Raphael Wallfi sch reputation for mild satire and high spirits, with his Concerto for Orchestra entitled 10 3 NI 5831 NI 5831 Naughty Limericks, premiered in Warsaw in September 1963 under the baton of conductor Svetlanov, the singer Irina Arkhipova, with décor and costumes created Gennadi Rozhdestvensky and later introduced to the USA by the New York by Alexander Tyshler. Philharmonic under Leonard Bernstein. This is based on Tschastuschki, a kind of Why were the Soviet offi cials so angry? The action of the opera takes place in the satiric folk-song on topical and humorous themes, found mainly in the villages of fi rst years after the end of the Second World War. The subject of those ‘vegetarian’ Belarus and the Ukraine, which had become a very popular urban form of doggerel years was quite unusual for the opera stage. It is set in a tragic Russian village that circulated by word of mouth in the USSR.