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570238bk Berlin 17/5/06 5:53 PM Page 8 Adriano The conductor-composer Adriano was born in Switzerland and lives in Zürich. As a musician he is mostly self-taught. In the late 1970s he established himself as a specialist on Ottorino Respighi and he has conducted many recordings of obscure or neglected symphonic repertoire. On Marco Polo/Naxos he has also initiated and recorded a series of fifteen CDs mainly of European film music composers, and has created and directed a series of classical music videos. All of Adriano’s 36 recording projects for various labels (including in most cases year-long research and elaborate score preparation or editing) have found wide recognition and his commitment is known to be fanatical and uncompromising. In his opinion, music history should be revised to show that it is not just the story of the so-called great composers, and that it should not be neatly classified into traditions and categories. Much more good music has been written than certain musicologists and critics would care to admit. Adriano has composed songs, orchestral, chamber and incidental pieces. His most recent works are a Concertino for Celesta and Strings, Concertino for Piano, Strings and Percussion and an Abysmal Saraband for organ, timpani and strings. His instrumental adaptations include song-cycles or songs by Johannes Brahms, Modest Mussorgsky (four cycles), Hugo Wolf, Ottorino Respighi, Othmar Schoeck, Jacques Ibert and Johann Strauss II. Moscow Symphony Orchestra The Moscow Symphony Orchestra, the first independent orchestra in modern Russia, was established through private resources, free of state support, in 1989. Four years later the distinguished French conductor Antonio de Almeida was invited to become musical director and chief conductor, positions he held until his sudden and much lamented death in February 1997. From the beginning the orchestra has been an active participant in the musical life of Moscow, appearing with famous Russian and foreign conductors and in collaboration with soloists of great international distinction. In addition to its extensive concert schedule the Moscow Symphony Orchestra has also won acclaim for its recordings, which include the complete symphonies of Scriabin, many of the orchestral compositions of Glazunov and Rimsky- Korsakov, sixteen symphonies by the twentieth century Italian composer Malipiero, an anthology of Flemish music and a series dedicated to famous overtures. The orchestra has participated in a number of international festivals and has undertaken concert tours throughout Europe, the United States and the Far East. Ellena Alekseyeva Ellena Alekseyeva was born in 1965 in Smolensk. She graduated at the Gnesin Music Academy under Valentina Zvereva. Since 1989 she has been an accompanist at the Gnesin Academy. Successful in a number of national and international competitions, since 1995 she has worked with the charitable ‘New Names’ of the Moscow Cultural Foundation. Ellena Alekseyeva teaches in the Annual International Master-classes in Moscow and Suzdal presented by the Moscow Cultural Foundation. In collaboration with the Union of Russian Composers she is a regular participant in the Moscow Autumn Festival of Chamber Music. She has appeared in concert in Russia, Germany and Italy, and has recorded the music of young Russian composers. 8.570238 8 570238bk Berlin 17/5/06 5:53 PM Page 2 Dmitry Shostakovich (1906–1975) (and not “formalistic craftmen”), able to bring into their in its right place again. Shibayev’s romance with Katya works conflict, comedy and satire, could the flat pathos of serves as the usual dramatic counterpoint to the patriotic “historic documentaries” be avoided. After Stalin’s death subject of this film. That for commercial reasons a war The Fall of Berlin in 1953, a new chapter of Soviet cinema opened, and new film has always to be coupled with a love story is the very Complete Film Score, Op. 82, 1949 Edited 1996 by Adriano (première recording) directors, or others, whose projects had been previously best way of promoting or criticising humanity’s most cruel rejected, were encouraged to bring fresh life into this and absurd invention. Touching love stories always sell The Unforgettable Year 1919 popular medium. Michail Kalatozov’s The Cranes are well, even in the case of political propaganda. flying (a film that won the Cannes Award in 1958, with The exciting concert suite of The Unforgettable Year Suite, Op. 89a, 1951 Edited 1954 by Levon Atovmyan (first complete recording) music by Mieczyslav/Moysey Weinberg) and Sergey 1919 contains a mini-piano concerto, in the style of, but Jutkevic’s adaptation of Shakespeare’s Othello (1956, with even more Hollywood-like than, Addinsell’s Warsaw Shostakovich’s Film Music works. Some forty years of film music composing within music by Aram Khachaturian) can be considered as typical Concerto of 1941, as if Shostakovich drew amusement Dmitry Shostakovich (DSCH) composed about 35 film- 56 turbulent years as a composer of symphonies, string products of the cultural thaw in Soviet art. from it. Within the suite, and probably the whole score scores. This is quite remarkable, out of a total quantity of quartets, operas and song cycles which have all become The Unforgettable Year 1919 won an award at the too, this piece sounds out of place, and in the film it should 147 numbered works. These were written between 1929 world famous, may have taken second place. Considering 1952 Karlsbad Film Festival. Once more, its script (based accompany the assault on a fort. In Russia this piece, and and 1970, which means about one a year. A dozen have his film scores as a whole, it may be seen that his earlier on a play by Vsevolod Vishnyevsky) shows a personally the sixth movement, were unfortunately missing from been extracted or arranged as concert suites and were works reflect more pleasure in the experimental than his attractive (and taller) heroic Stalin, showing himself on Alexander Gauk’s passionate Melodiya recording of 1956. already recorded on LPs during the mono and stereo eras later ones do, and this not only in comparison with the the battlefield more than he ever had in reality. The plot The present recording is, therefore, the first complete one. of Melodiya, and were occasionally licensed on American greatly inferior musical level of his fellow composers from reconstructs Petrograd’s historical Civil War days of The fierce introduction has some impressive and well- and European labels. Suites or fragments of Zoya (1944), contemporary Hollywood. Particularly notable is the fact October 1919, during which Stalin had purged the army written fanfares, to the delight of excellent brass groups, Michurin (1948), The Gadfly (1955) and Hamlet (1963) that Shostakovich had found a way to integrate his and the fleet of traitors, after foreign intervention had and the Tarantella of the Scherzo is a whirlwind virtuoso had also become known in international concert repertoire, straightforward lyricism and sardonic language with film threatened. He had also opposed directives to evacuate piece for the whole orchestra. The second movement is together with his symphonies, concertos and chamber music, whether in scoring such simple pieces as a waltz, Petersburg and eliminate the fleet, by recruiting an atmospheric and lyrical and contains beautiful solos for music. His score for Leonid Trauberg’s silent masterpiece a polka, a galop, a song or a short interlude. In other words, ensemble of bolsheviks and peasants to defend Fort clarinet and cello. The percussion players have their fling New Babylon (1929) was relaunched in Paris in a his complete personality is omnipresent in his film music Krasnaya Gorka, a particularly strategic point. The in the third, sixth and seventh movements, while in the performance with a live orchestra in 1975, conducted by as well, making it a valuable inheritance of Russia’s Communists are eventually arrested and Shibayev, a sailor, Intermezzo, fingerwork for the string section must not be Marius Constant, on a date which can be considered a culture, besides the achievements by other composers such after he has been helped to escape from imprisonment by underestimated. All in all, some exciting and spontaneous memorable one in the history of silent film music. For a as Sergey Prokofiev, Aram Khachaturian, Mieczyslaw a Russian intellectual, participates in the mass raids on music for an unconventional concert with an excellent young man of 23, this mordant score was already a Weinberg and Dimitry Kabalevsky, who also worked for Petrograd’s bourgeois districts, clearing up and repressing ensemble, this as a final argument against those who turn significant achievement, but by then he had already written the film industry with excellent results. counter-revolutionary conspiracies. The Red Army and their noses up at this kind of incidental music. his first three symphonies, a chamber opera (The Nose) the Sailors conquer Krasnaya Gorka, whose occupants, The instrumentation is practically the same as in The and over ten chamber and piano works. He had started as The Fall of Berlin – The film the White Guards, are supported by an English squadron, Fall of Berlin, except that it also requires glockenspiel and a young and underpaid pianist in a Leningrad silent The Fall of Berlin (Padeniye Berlina) is a monumental and Shibayev is there at the right time to become a hero, xylophone, besides one more extra trumpet, and a concert cinema, which was actually the ideal ambiance to learn two-part Mosfilm colour production of 1949 and 1950, after having unmasked an English spy and prevented the grand piano. how to write for the movies. Silent cinema’s purely directed by Michail Chiaureli and based on a script by destruction of the Fort. Finally, the Red Flag can be hoisted improvisatory or last-minute way of scoring/arranging Chiaureli and Pyotr Andreyevich Pavlenko (1899-1951), Notes by Adriano technique was the best training for a musician’s intuition a famous writer who had also collaborated with Sergey edited by Keith Anderson or sense of drama.