Letter to the Editor

From Guy Rickards banishment for the composer. Indeed, its gentle style is winning and close to the classic Russian In the light of the growing interest in the music of concertos of Tchaikovsky, Glazunov, even Nikolai Roslavets, seen most recently in his Konius, for all the intricate chromaticism of some inclusion in the South Bank's 'Russian Spring' parts of the work which would have passed most festival (reviewed by David Wright in Tempo 177) listeners by (and would do today, I am sure, if so and the CD issue of the Piano Trio No. 3, what is much were not made of it). still less than clear is what precisely caused his Roslavets's attempts at chromatic system- total eclipse from Soviet musical life - at least in ization bring obvious parallels to mind with Western Russia (far worse than anything schoenberg, Hauer, Valen, et al, but to my ears Shostakovich was later to endure). While works relate back to Scriabin as much as anything and such as Aux heures de la nouvelle lune and the stringcertainly retain a distinctly Russian character. quartets (both included in 'Russian Spring'; why Schoenberg was not yet the Great Formalist did the Tempo review omit rhe fine single- Bugbear so the language of the Concerto in itself movement Third Quartet?) were undoubtedly hardly seems a legitimate cause. Perhaps glasnost radical for the period, especially in Russia, it is will extend further to reveal this particular the later, mellower Violin Concerto that is skeleton: in the meantime one can but listen to usually cited as the reason for his exile. Yet the the music in wonderment, and try to forget the Stalinist terror was at that time years away and apparent catastrophic consequences of its more advanced music was both composed in composition. Russia without censure and welcomed from Western Europe during the later 1920s. Though 9 Somergate censure did indeed arrive, Roslavets had by then Horsham been safely mewed up in Soviet Central Asia for West Sussex the best part of a decade, so it seems to me that RH12 1UJ there is a large chunk missing from the equation. I

cannot imagine many in the audience at the Tempo intends to return to the subject of Roslavets and his forms of serial premiere finding the work so offensive - even the working during 1992, when at least a partial answer to Mr Rkkards's boorish Man of Steel - as to merit internal question regarding his political fate may be forthcoming. - Ed.

News Section

Composers Northern Sinfonia. (UK premiere)—11 July/Lichfield RUPERT BAWDEN. 77ie Devil's Workshop (premiere)—30 Festival/same artists. July/King's Lynn Festival/Ernst Kovacic (vln), Susan Tomes (pno). ROBERTO GERHARD (d.1970) Cancionero de Pedrell (US premiere)—26 September/Merkin Hall, /Angelina JOHN BULLER is completing an opera on The Bacchae for Reaux (sop), Music Today Ens. c. John McGlinn. performance next year at the Coliseum. GARETH GLYN. (premiere)—16 October/ DIANA BURRELL. Lucifer (premiere)—2 July/Almeida Swansea Festival/BBC Welsh SO c. Tadaaki Otaka. Festival/Madeleine Mitchell (vln), Peter Lawrence (tpt). HENRYK MIKOLAJ GORECK1. Three Lullabies (prem- ELLIOTT CARTER. Scrivo in Vento for solo flute (prem- iere)—2 August/Lerchenborg Festival, Denmark/Ars Nova iere)—20 July/Avignon Festival/Robert Aitken (fl). c. Bo Holten. No.2 (premiere)—18 August/ Schleswig-Holstein Festival/. (US prem- JOHN CASKEN. Cello Concerto (premiere)—7 July/ iere)—9 November/New York, Alice Tully Hall/Kronos Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival/Heinrich Schiff (vie), Quartet.

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SOFIA GUBAIDULINA. Cello Concerto premiere)—27 . String Quartet No.3 (premiere)—9 June/ August/Helsinki/Vladimir Tonkha (vc), Helsinki PO c. Albuquerque, New Mexico/Guarneri Quartet. Concerto for Eri Klas. Piano (left hand) and Orchestra (premiere)—2 November/ /Gary Graffman, Curtis Institute Symphony. . 2 Concert Arias (premiere)—28 July/Montepulciano Festival/Roberto Sacco (ten), Youth PAUL RUDERS. 13 Posliudes (UK premiere)—11 July-/ Orchestra of the United Berlin c. Markus Stenz. London, Arts Theatre/Rolf Hind (pno).

YORK HOLLER. Der Meister und Margarita (German AULIS SALLINEN. Echoes from a Play (premiere)—30 July/ premiere)—1 November/Cologne/Cologne Opera c. Lothar Ravinia Festival, Illinois, USA/Thomas Gallant (ob), Kronos Zagrosek. Piano Concerto (Polish premiere)—28 September/ String Quartet. Warsaw Autumn Festival/Volker Banfield (pno), Pomeranian PO c. Michael Ziilm; (US premiere)—27 November/ DMITRI SMIRNOV. Symphony No.l, The Seasons (UK Chicago/Daniel Barenboim (pno), Chicago SO c. Pierre premiere)—23 October/London, Royal Festival Hall/BBC Boulez. SO c. Oliver Knussen.

SIMON HOLT is completing a Viola Concerto, and is MAREK STACHOWSKI. Cello Concerto (premiere)—20 composing a Rilke setting for soprano and ensemble, Tanagra, September/Warsaw Autumn/Boris Pergamenchikov (vie), for the Viennese Ensemble of the 20th Century. Sinfonia Varsovia c. Krzystof Penderecki.

TOSHI ICH1YANAGI. Luminous Space (UK premiere)—9 KARLHEINZ STOCKHAUSEN. Invasion (premiere)—29 October/Swansea Festival/Tokyo SO c. Kazuyoshi Akiyama. September/Frankfurt, Alte Oper.

JONATHAN LLOYD. Missa Brews (Polish premiere)—24 PAVEL SZYMANSKI. Sixty-Odd Pages (premiere)—22 September/Warsaw Autumn Festival/BBC Singers c. Simon September/Warsaw Autumn/Sudwestfunk Orchestra Baden Joly. Baden c. Matthias Bamert.

JOHN McCABE. Canyons (premiere)—9 July/Barbican, MICHAEL TORKE is writing a new chamber work London/Guildhall Symphonic Wind Band c. Peter Gane. Red commissioned by the Milwaukee Art Museum. Leaves (premiere)—11 July/Istanbul Festival/European Community Chamber Orchestra c. Eivind Aadland. ANDREW TOOVEY. Ja ja ja ja ja, nee, nee, nee, nee, nee (premiere)—12 June/London, British Music Information EDWARD McGUlRE. Trombone Concerto (premiere)—26 Centre/Ixion Ensemble. Fallen (UK premiere)—19 August/ August/Aix-en-Provence Festival/John Kenny (tbn), Glasgow Dartington Summer School/Ixion. Festival Strings. MARK-ANTHONY TURNAGE. Momentum (premieere)— JOHN McLEOD. The Passage of the Divine Bird (premiere)— 16 June/Birmingham (opening concert of new Symphony 24 June/Orkney, St.Magnus Festival/Owne Murray (free- Hall)/CBSO c. Simon Rattle. bass Accordion). Fetes Galantes for 2 violins, cello and harpsichord (premiere)—11 June/Edinburgh, Canongate Church/The Kist of Music. Books received

JAMES MACMILLAN. Tuireadh for clarinet quintet (prem- (A listing in this column does not preclude a review in a future issue of iere)—25 June/Orkney, St.Magnus Festival/James Campbell Tempo) (cl), Allegri String Quartet. Pierre Boulez: A World of Harmony by Lev Koblyakov. SIR PETER MAXWELL DAV1ES. Strathctyde Concerto No.5 Harwood Academic Publishers Contemporary Music Studies for violin and viola (premiere)—11 December/Glasgow/ Volume 2, £27.00. James Clark (vn), Catherine Marwood (va), Scottish Chamber Orchestra c. the composer. Bliss on Music: Selected Writings of Arthur Bliss 1920-1975 edited by Gregory Roscow. Oxford University Press, DETLEV MULLER-SIEMENS. String Quartet No.l (prem- £20.00. iere)—31 July/Hitzacker, Germany/Nomos Quartet. A History of Music Aesthetics by Enrico Fubini. Macmillan, ANDRZEJ PANUFNIK. Katyn Epitaph (German prem- £49.50. iere)—13 September/Bonn/Orchester der Beethovenalle c. Dennis Russell Davies. Grip Musikken by Jorunn B. Lie. Universitetsforlaget, Oslo. No price quoted. KRYSZTOF PENDERECKI. Ubu RLX (premiere)—6 July/ Munich/Bavarian State Opera with Robert Tear, c. Michael Through Music to the Self by Peter Michael Hamel. Element Boder. String Trio (premiere)—29 September/Warsaw Books, £7.99 (Seventh Impression). Autumn/Deutsches Streichtrio. Pet Shop Boys, Literally by Chris Heath. Penguin, £4.99. ROBERT HP PLATZ. Dunkles Haus, Music-theatre (prem- iere)—6 June/Munich Opera Festival. Sinead: her Lije and Music by Jimmy Guterman. Penguin, £6.99. ANTHONY POWERS is writing his Second String Quartet for the Lindsay Quartet. Shoots from the Hip by Charles Shaar Murray. Penguin, £6.99. STEVE REICH. The Four Sections (Dutch premiere)—14 The Penguin Dictionary of Musical Performers by Arthur Jacobs. June/Rotterdam/Rotterdam PO c. Reinbert de Leeuw. Penguin, £5.99. Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.35.229, on 29 Sep 2021 at 00:00:26, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0040298200014571