Wolfgang Amadeus MOZART
Sinfonia Concertante K364«
Vladimir Ivanovich TSYTOVICH
Concerto for Viola and Chamber
Orchestraª
Leningrad Chamber Orchestra«
Orchestra of Old and Modern Musicª
Victor Liberman (Violin«) Yuri Kramarov (Violaª)
Conducted by Edward Serov
Kontrapunkt 32314
[52.15]
Vladimir Tsytovich (b. 1931) had the misfortune, perhaps, of growing up and
entering adulthood at a time in Soviet musical history when the previous
generation of composers, particularly Prokofiev and Shostakovich, had already
stamped their (differing) approaches to confronting the 'system' and established
their world-wide reputations. For younger composers during the nineteen-fifties
and sixties opportunities to speak with a fresh voice were far less easy
to identify under the dead hand of a slowly dying but stubbornly resistant
political regime.
A research student on the staff of the Leningrad Conservatoire specialising
in the music of Bartok, Tsytovich composed orthodox concertos for piano,
for violin and in 1965, this Viola Concerto. His academic background and
the influence of Bartok is plainly to be discerned and the result is more
of a thesis than a flowering of musical expression. The first movement is
a mixture of Soviet realism intermixed with Bartokian harmonies, the second
a rather 'penny in the slot' exercise of adding more instruments one by one
and then taking them away again, in like fashion. The finale is a more lyrical
but ultimately rather empty version of the style of the first movement. The
recording is decent enough and the playing appears committed.
Any lingering interest this CD might still provide is swept away by a performance
of the wonderful Sinfonia Concertante of Mozart (for violin, viola and orchestra)
of unremitting plainness - the conductor needs to take a great deal of
responsibility for this with a severe straightjacket approach to the
accompaniment. The recording is considerably worse than the Tsytovich,
over-reverberant and, as regards the orchestra, distant.
One has to wonder why the Danish label Kontrapunkt chose to issue these analogue
recordings made in 1977. The quality of the accompanying printed information
is slipshod - Kontrapunkt claim the recording is DDD and it uses the name
'St. Petersburg Chamber Orchestra' on the booklet cover (the city was only
renamed in 1991) whilst correctly referring to the Leningrad Chamber Orchestra
in the short biography of conductor Edward Serov.
One to avoid.
Simon Foster
Performance
Sound
If in difficulties getting the disc it can be obtained in the UK direct from
Discovery at:
Discovery Records Ltd
discovery.records@virgin.net
phone 01672 563931
fax 01672 563934
