KHACHATURIAN: Masquerade Suite; Valencian Widow Suite – Alexander Detisov, violin/The Moscow Symphony Orchestra/ Veronica Dudarova – Moscow Studio Archives

by | Oct 20, 2005 | Classical Reissue Reviews | 0 comments

KHACHATURIAN: Masquerade Suite; Valencian Widow Suite –
Alexander Detisov, violin/The Moscow Symphony Orchestra/ Veronica
Dudarova/

Moscow Studio Archives MOS19031,  44:15  (Distrib. Allegro) ***:

While I must always balk at any CD which contains less than 45 minutes
worth of music, I could not resist wishing to audition a new piece of
music (to me) by Aram Khachaturian, whose gift for melody, along with
his pulsating, Armenian-bred rhythms, has always beguiled my ears.
Khachaturian composed music for Lope de Vega’s comedic play La viada de
Valencia for a 1940 Moscow production. He later arranged six movements
as a concert suite. The Iberian setting immediately has Khachaturian
employing elements from zarzuela and from Bizet’s Carmen, apparent in
the opening chord of the Intermezzo movement. Both swaggering and
lyrically sentimental, the music has the usual Khachaturian color
combinations, including a rather Eastern sinuous melodic strain in the
waltzing Serenade. The third movement, Song, is an homage to
Tchaikovsky.  The last two sections have the raucous, zany
character of buffoons’ dances, though the major/minor tonality shifts
grab one’s musicological attentions.

The suite for Lermontov’s Masquerade (1944) is familiar, although
auditors may not know how similar the plot is to Shakespeare’s Othello,
in which a paranoid protagonist’s jealousy leads to his unjustly
poisoning his wife. Dudarova leads a spirited performance (both
recorded suites derive from 1987 tapes), and violinist Detisov plies
sweetly in the Nocturne. Clarinet and strings combine elegantly for the
Romance. Despite the tragic consequences in the drama, Khachaturian
ends with a pompous, tumbling Galop, perhaps a bit of political mockery
of Soviet censors. Spirited readings, but alas, rather brief.

–Gary Lemco

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