Anthology of Piano Music by Russian and Soviet Composers: Part One (1917-1991) – 6 composers/4 pianists – Melodiya

Anthology of Piano Music by Russian and Soviet Composers: Part One (1917-1991) = REVUTSKY: Song, Op. 17, No. 1; ZADERATSKY: Sonata No. 2; ROSLAVETS: 5 Preludes; 2 Poems; FEINBERG: Sonata No. 5, Op. 10; PROTOPOPOV: Sonata No. 3, Op. 6; DESHEVOV: Rails – Tikhon Khrennikov, Jr., p. (Revutsky)/ Fedor Amirov, p. (Zaderatsky, Protopopov)/ Yuri Favorin, p. (Roslavets, Feinberg)/ Nikita Mndoyants, p. (Deshevov) – Melodiya MEL CD 10 01965, 71:10 [Distr. by Allegro] [4/16/12] ****:
Unusual repertory from the relatively unexplored cache of Russo-Soviet piano music (this is Disc 3 of an ongoing edition) opens with music by Lev Revutsky (1889-1977), his Song for Piano, a romantic Ukrainian miniature that could easily pass for obscure Rachmaninov. The 1928 Sonata No. 2 by Vsevolod Zaderatsky (1891-1953) proceeds in a single movement whose mercurial episodes include patterns and figures that combine aspects of Hindemith with pseudo-serial procedures, as diaphanous as they can be aggressively percussive. Several times arrested and confined to a Gulag in Kolyma, Zaderatsky somehow overcame his personal anguishes to compose his three-hour cycle of 24 Preludes and Fugues for Piano, aligning him to the spirit of both Bach and Shostakovich.
The tissue of Sonata No. 2, more choppily rhythmic than melodic, proceeds in bursts of discordant color, fragmented and persistent. At some thirteen minutes into the Sonata, the music erupts into a toccata of sorts, Bach and Bartok at once. Ensues an extended, moody, dark middle section, chromatic and syncopated to sound like a petulant child’s punishing the keyboard. The whirling toccata returns, quite volatile in the right hand. The last three minutes plays like a funeral march, almost an echo or parody of the opening chords of Rachmaninov’s C Minor Concerto.
Nikolai Roslavets (1881-1944) became a pariah among Soviet composers, his having been ostracized by the Russian Association of Proletarian Musicians. His Two Poems (1920) extend, perhaps more aggressively, mercurial impulses from Scriabin, as do his Preludes (1919-1922). The second of the Preludes quite disturbs our complacency. Like its successor, No. 3, erotic washes of sound become interrupted by nightmarish energies. The pieces resist easy designations as to form, since they tend to dissipate rather than resolve themselves harmonically. No. 5 has to be about the most elusive “nocturne” I’ve heard lately.
Samuil Feinberg (1890-1962) still enjoys legend status as a Moscow pianist. His one-movement Sonata No. 5 (1921) distills more Scriabin, even employing the designation volando to invoke his emotional tenor. Playful, almost Schumann gestures confront darker impulses and turbulent gusts of sound in block bass chords. A central section assumes a dreamier guise, although thick, muddy undercurrent persist. The cascades usher us in a descent of power and mottled light, luminous quicksand. By the end, only phosphorescent shards remain.
Sergei Protopopov (1893-1954) made palpable in his large, one-movement Sonata No. 3 musicologist Boleslav Yavorsky’s “theory of modal rhythm.” Immediately toying with tritones, in the manner of Liszt, Protopopov moves like Alexandre Tcherepnin, within a self-defined universe. Ostinati and polyrhythms clutter the piece, but its tenor at first seems quiet and meditative; later, the dissonances become urgent but not severe. A follower of both Scriabin and Mossolov, Protopopov insinuates eroticism into industrialized space, and the resultant angst has a hazy, convulsive, persuasive energy. Perhaps this mighty Sonata No. 3 stands as Protopopov’s equivalent to Liszt’s Dante Sonata. As a testament to a pianist’s endurance, this Sonata No. 3 provides a marathon challenge.
Finally, the Rails, Op. 16 (1926) of composer Vladimir Deshevov (1889-1955), a miniature in the spirit of Arthur Honegger’s Pacific 231, a “locomotive” study that here begins Presto and proceeds in eighth-note thirds relentlessly to end of the track in C.
—Gary Lemco