572318bk Prokofiev:570034bk Hasse 22/5/11 9:33 PM Page 4 Matthew Jones Matthew is violist of the Bridge Duo (with pianist Michael Hampton) and the Debussy Ensemble. Recent recital and chamber music venues include the Wigmore Hall, London’s South Bank and the Forbidden City Concert Hall in Beijing; he made his Carnegie Hall recital debut in 2008. He was also a member of the Badke String Quartet when they won the 2007 Melbourne International Chamber Music Competition, and performs regularly with Ensemble MidtVest in Denmark. He is greatly in demand as a concerto soloist, festival artist and contemporary music performer. Matthew is a professor at Trinity College of Music, Royal Welsh College and Charterhouse International Music Festival, PROKOFIEV and has given masterclasses in the USA, Australia, Malaysia, Japan and throughout Europe. His extensive discography includes two Bridge Duo recordings of English music, Hilary Tann’s chamber music and Haflidi Hallgrimsson’s chamber works. Born in Swansea, Wales, Matthew is also a composer, conductor, mathematics graduate and Suite from teacher of the Alexander Technique and Kundalini Yoga. For more information, visit www.matt-jones.com. Rivka Golani Romeo and Rivka Golani is recognized as one of the great violists and musicians of modern times. BBC Music Magazine included her in its list of the 200 most important instrumentalists and the five most important violists currently performing. Her contributions to the Juliet advancement of viola technique have already given her a place in the history of the instrument and have been a source of inspiration not only to other players but to many composers who have been motivated by her mastery: more than 215 works have been (arr. Borisovsky) written for her, 50 of them concertos, a record matched by no other violist in history. Ms. Golani’s awesome technique, riveting stage presence, and superbly sensitive musicianship have made her a favourite with music-lovers and critics alike. Allied to her technical ability, Rivka Golani’s approach to the instrument is at once passionate and sensitive; and her performances reveal the originality of interpretation and musicianship of a great Matthew Jones, artist, and her reputation as a teacher draws students from all over the world. Michael Hampton Viola Michael Hampton graduated as a major prize-winner from the Royal College of Music. In the subsequent years he has continued to perform on major stages around the world, including the Wigmore Hall and Carnegie Hall, broadcast frequently on the BBC, and Rivka Golani, record, all to high critical acclaim. He works both as a soloist and chamber musician, equally at home in both instrumental and song repertoire. Viola Michael Hampton, Piano 8.572318 4 572318bk Prokofiev:570034bk Hasse 22/5/11 9:33 PM Page 2 Sergey Prokofiev (1891–1953) Instead the composer signed a contract for the ballet with for the viola and viola d’amore more than 250 works by a Suite from Romeo and Juliet, Op. 64 (arr. Vadim Borisovsky) the Bolshoy Ballet Theatre and collaborated with the stage huge variety of composers. With Prokofiev’s full approval, director Sergey Radlov, now no longer associated with the he initially transcribed a suite of eight movements for viola Widely considered one of the greatest composers of the return to live in Moscow. Some of his most successful Kirov Theatre, on the material, orchestrating twenty pages and piano (tracks 1-4, 6-8 and 11 on this recording) and twentieth century, Sergey Sergeyevich Prokofiev was born music dates from the transition period up to his return to a day. On completion of the score in summer 1935, some years later arranged a further five, two of which in the farming village of Sontsovka, Ukraine, in April Moscow in 1936 – the Second Violin Concerto, the music however, the music was declared ‘impossible to dance to’. require a second viola. The transcriptions are remarkably 1891. The first thirteen years of his life were spent there for the film Lieutenant Kijé and the ballet Romeo and There was even an attempt to create a happy ending for the successful given the complexity and intricacy of the with his father, an agricultural engineer, and mother, a Juliet. Lieutenant Kijé marked the beginning of ballet by allowing Romeo to arrive a minute earlier and original score; Borisovsky’s writing for the piano proves well-educated woman whose musical abilities proved a Prokofiev’s interest in writing music for film and stage. find Juliet still alive, since “living people can dance, the to be as adept as that for the viola. crucial influence on her son’s musical development. Also completed in the years following his return to dying cannot”, but Prokofiev eventually agreed to provide Prokofiev attributed different musical themes to the Prokofiev’s first formal music training began at the age Moscow, composed in just four days, was Peter and the an alternative, tragic ending. The ballet remained characters and their emotions, with leitmotifs repeated and of seven, and two years later he accompanied his mother Wolf. The Soviet leadership, however, began to impose unperformed until its 1938 première in Brno. In the transformed within the orchestral score. In his on her annual visit to St Petersburg, where he saw operas increasingly strict guidelines on composers, demanding intervening years Prokofiev had crafted two Symphonic autobiography, Prokofiev wrote of the four primary by Gounod and Borodin which inspired him to write his that their music support the ‘struggle against folk-negating Suites and a piano transcription from the material, which elements in his own musical style: ‘the classical, the own, entitled The Giant. Young Sergey received tuition modernistic directions’ and publicly ridiculing anyone who were well received by the public. Only after these modern, the motoric or ‘toccata’, and the lyrical’. Romeo from composer and pianist Reinhold Moritsevich Gliere, dared to err towards ‘bourgeois culture’. successes did the Kirov and Bolshoy take notice: the and Juliet’s incredible lyricism, most notable in the lovers’ and in 1904, despite the sadness of leaving his father The German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941 former eventually staged the ballet in 1940, the latter in music, is heightened in the full orchestral version by the behind in Sontsovka, he and his mother moved to St caused Prokofiev to be ‘removed’ from Moscow to the 1946, following which Prokofiev admitted reluctantly that characteristically varied and imaginative orchestration. In Petersburg. Caucasas along with other senior cultural figures. Despite the Bolshoy dancers were not “altogether deaf to good reducing the excerpts to just two instruments, however, In his entrance examination to the Conservatory, the the harsh conditions and separation from his family, who music”. surprisingly little is lost. This is owing not only to the fourteen-year-old presented four operas, two sonatas, a had to remain in Moscow, he remained prolific and Moscow-born Vadim Vasilyevich Borisovsky (1900- timeless nature of Prokofiev’s genial writing, but to the symphony and several piano pieces to the panel, and composed some of his most enduring music including the 72) is known to many as the founder of the Soviet Viola imaginative use of the viola’s full register, harmonics, became the youngest pupil ever admitted. His teachers Fifth Symphony and Cinderella. Following the end of the School. He began his studies as a violinist in the Moscow bowing techniques, including playing near to the bridge included Glazunov, Rimsky-Korsakov and Anatol Liadov, war, a second marriage and various health problems, he Conservatory but soon transferred to the viola, and upon (sul ponticello), playing with the wood of the bow (col but Prokofiev looked beyond the musical traditions from still found the resolve to compose, the première of his graduation in 1922 formed the Beethoven Quartet with legno) and ample use of pizzicato. The choice of key into which they had emerged and drew inspiration from such Seventh Symphony representing his last public appearance. colleagues, remaining their violist until 1964. He also which Borisovsky put each excerpt is also crucial to the composers as Max Reger and Alexander Scriabin. Shortly Prokofiev died on 5th March 1953, the same day as Stalin, became Professor of Viola at the Conservatory only five facility and resonance of the viola part. A recording of after the first performance of his post-conservatory from a brain haemorrhage, and was posthumously awarded years after graduating, and gave numerous recitals on both Borisovsky playing the Balcony Scene confirms his Classical Symphony in 1918 Prokofiev headed to America the Lenin Prize in 1957 for his Seventh Symphony. viola and viola d’amore. Composers such as Schnittke, mastery of the instrument and his determination to push the where his music was poorly received by critics but “In everything I write I adhere to two main principles Khachaturian, Shchedrin and Shostakovich dedicated boundaries of his instrument’s capabilities. applauded by audiences and music producers. While in – clarity in expressing my ideas, and laconism, avoiding works to him or his students; Shostakovich dedicated his On this recording the excerpts are presented in the order New York he met his future wife, a soprano with the stage everything superfluous in their expression”, wrote Thirteenth String Quartet to Borisovsky and wrote of his in which they appear in the ballet, and thanks to the name Lina Llubera, and following the postponement of a Prokofiev. “In my view, the composer, just as the poet, “tremendous talent, great skill and big heart”. Hindemith addition of three excerpts transcribed by Grunes and Jones, production of The Love for Three Oranges by Chicago the sculptor or painter, is in duty bound to serve man, the once wrote: “In the world union of viola players, include virtually all of the most significant themes, motifs, Opera, he left for Paris to meet the impresario Dyagilev.