Karayev: Symphony No. 1/Violin Concerto

Janna Gandelman, violin. Kiev Virtuosi Symphony Orchestra/Dmitry Yablonsky
Naxos 8.573722
Total Time:  54:43
Recording:   ****/****
Performance: ****/****

A couple of years ago, we explored some ballet music by Kara Karayev (1918-1982).  A pupil of Shostakovich, Karayev is an Azerbaijani composer whose music is beginning to come to light through this Naxos series.  This release gives us a chance to audition the composer’s first symphony and a concerto from the early and middle periods of his life, respectively.  Folk and nationalist flavor tends to inform Karayev’s music and this is certainly true of the symphony, but the composer’s shift to more serial technique appears in the concerto.

As the first major composer from the South Caucasus region of the Soviet Union, the Symphony No. 1 becomes one of the first significant compositions of its type.  As in Shostakovich of this period, the work calls for a large orchestra and host of percussion that expands to harp and piano.  The work is cast into two mostly equal halves.  The first movement is an intriguing exploration of sonata form with a Neo-Classical style that finds a fascinating fugal section kick off the “Allegro” after a very folk-like melody lulls us in the opening bars.  The unusual lyric line of the flute gradually grows into a fuller statement with strings slowly building underneath the shift in winds and piano color.  The allegro then has us in quite firm modernist harmony in the fugue with clearly defined entries and orchestral color that moves through the orchestra in the way one might expect from Shostakovich.  The lyrical second idea has an almost romantic and nostalgic quality to it in its more intimate string iteration.  This moves into piccolo at one point briefly before shifting to low strings in a rather touching moment.  The technique here is similar to Shostakovich in its insistent use of a major chordal punctuation against the lyric line.  This is shattered by the return of the more aggressive fugal material.  Unlike his mentor though, Karayev’s bigger moments do not always have the sort of emotional shattering intensity.  His language tends to often dissolve into more romantic visions though the edgier material might try to overwhelm it, there more a heroic sense to the expression here.  The second movement is a set of variations with a scherzo and finale.  It opens with the darker colors of the orchestra in low strings and bassoons which serves as a parallel idea to the opening flute line of the symphony.  Once this occurs, we move through a series of dance-like variants that first features a plodding idea.  This moves into more modern dance styles with an almost virtuosic musical style that has touches of wit, less sardonic than Shostakovich, which explore a variety of instrumental colors of the primary theme.  The music is actually quite engaging and the formal delineations help guide the listener well through this rather interesting work.  While Yablonsky makes the case somewhat for the work, the performance feels like it needs a bit more bite and perhaps a lot more strings than are at his disposal here.  The recording itself though is crisp and clear.  Certainly an interesting performance to whet the appetite for more explorations of the depths this music may have hiding within it, especially in the opening movement.  The quiet ending is also a bit odd and feels like it needs a bit more power.  As such, the symphony seems a bit unfinished with a more celebratory or bittersweet declamation.  Though one may counter that the quiet is just that.

While given the chance to visit the United States in 1961, Karayev met Stravinsky in Los Angeles.  The latter composer was in the midst of his own serial explorations by that time and this may have had an impact on Karayev who would use this approach in the third symphony.  Serialism was still an ideological anathema at the time thus making that work, and the 1967 Violin Concerto potential targets for censorship, but this does not appear to have occurred.  Leonid Kogan premiered the work in 1968 in a concert celebrating the composer’s 50^th birthday.  The work would make an interesting companion to the Shostavovich second violin concerto written in 1967 as well.  The concerto has a rather interesting slow build of texture and material.  The solo kicks off with the straight presentation of Karayev’s row.  The orchestra has been reduced to mostly strings here that sometimes pick up the row, but tend to lie in hushed harmonies underneath the soloist.  Winds enter in the second movement with its chorale-like feel in long lyrical lines.  The movement has an arch-like shape bringing us back to the opening textures which grow dark, and dense.  Heading into the final movement, Karayev begins layering in more of the orchestra, starting with percussion and eventually brass, in a sardonic march forward.  The fanfare-like idea has a rather unusual quality as the soloist moves through it almost oblivious to the inevitable emotional sameness of the stark material.  The violin’s rapid passage ideas eventually give way to a more twisted solo meditative section.  The movement has this sense of someone looking out and seeing something lost that no one else can see.  There are a few unusual colors and surprises to help bring the concerto to a dramatic close.  The Kiev orchestra proves to be the perfect backdrop to Gandelman’s often quite intimate and moving solo work in the concerto.  This is especially true of the opening movement and the meditation of the third movement.  The virtuosic sections are equally fascinating and filled with their own emotional intensity.

The concerto is the real find of the release.  Do not let the serialist construction discourage the opportunity to explore this rather intense and fascinating work.  The symphony itself is a rather easy entry into Karayev’s more traditional style, but one can hear how this is transformed into the new compositional technique employed in the concerto.  It makes for a rather intriguing hour of music.

Shostakovich & Liszt Sonnets
Dmitri Hvorostokovsky, baritone. Ivari Ilja, piano.
Ondine 1277
Total Time:  58:53
Recording:   ****/****
Performance: ****/****

Coming at the end of the composer’s life, Shostakovich’s settings of poetry by Michelangelo Buonarroti is a work of often dark and despairing economical writing.  The 1974 Suite on Poems by Michelangelo Buonarrotti is the featured work on this new Ondine release featuring noted baritone Dmitri Hvorostovsky.  Created to celebrate the 500^th anniversary of the artist’s birth, the suite consists of eight sonnets and three poems translated in Russian by Abram Efros and are the texts for these eleven songs. The music here is often rather stark, often angular, more atonal at times, and brooding.  The piano almost provides single-lined commentary with bare harmonic support for the declamatory vocal lines.  Some feel this is partly Shostakovich taking a look back at the text-setting of Mussorgsky and some of the expressive writing surely connects to that great 19^th-Century composer.  While we might also brood deeply about the texts used here, we can also think of this as a composer expressing his own final thoughts on the legacy of another artist, perhaps reflecting on his own in what must surely have been felt at his own last days.  In “Dante”, a four-note motif is perhaps a not so subtle Beethoven reference connected to this great literary giant as well.  One does get the sense that Shostakovich felt his own artistic contribution would far outlive him and he was of course more than correct!  The suite tends to appear in its orchestrated version, but this rather severe music seems to carry a more intriguing austerity in its chamber setting here.  The final movement has an almost magical quality to it with touches of earlier Shostakovich in the piano line which becomes quite animated and asserts more harmonic anchors with an almost folk-like sensibility.

Franz Liszt is mostly remembered for his brilliant piano music so the inclusion of these Petrarch Sonnets is a rather nice complement.  As one would expect, the piano part plays an integral role in establishing mood and imagery against the vocal line.  These songs of love feature a great deal of imagery which Liszt matches equally with compositional leeway for repeated words and emphasis that is created by placing key texts at the top of a line.  Liszt worked on these pieces between 1843-1846 creating four different settings, the first for tenor and piano, a set for just piano (the more familiar perhaps in a third revision that ended up in the Annees de pelerinage II), and one for low voice and piano published in 1883.  These pieces of course fit more into the grand romantic style of the period with perhaps a touch of the operatic at times.

Though some may prefer a darker bass sound in these pieces, Hvorostovsky’s voice somehow manages just the right balance of anguish and deeper feeling allowing accompanist Ivari Ilja to add the proper emotional counterpoint in the Shostakovich.  In the Liszt, it is easier perhaps for Hvorostovsky to open up a bit and create a bit more lyrical nuance.  The interpretation thus balances well between these two large cycles making for a rather engrossing hour of music.  The performances were recorded in 2012 and 2014 when the baritone was performing them in recitals.  The recording itself has good presence and just the right amount of ambience to help provide some depth to the otherwise starker Shostakovich.