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Alexander GLAZUNOV (1865-1936) |
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There’s plenty of Glazunov about these days, what with Naxos’s monumental series which, as an alternative or for comparison, features all three of these works on two of their discs. His music is very approachable; we are discussing works written in 1886 (the symphony), 1888 (Mazurka) and 1894 (the orchestral fantasy). Glazunov lived his three score years and ten (1865-1936) but was forced into exile by Bolshevism in 1928, dying in France eight years later. The symphony (one of eight and part of a ninth, so he was yet another composer who never made it into double figures as far as that musical form is concerned) was dedicated to the memory of Liszt, whom he admired and met a couple of years earlier in Weimar. The old Abbé predicted a good future for Glazunov, though ‘all the world will talk about this composer’ was going too far. This symphony owes much to Borodin (his second B minor symphony) and Rimsky-Korsakov (Sheherezade) for it is full of oriental colour and exoticism, as well as Liszt’s habit of taking a motto theme and developing it as fully as possible throughout the work, in this case set out before the listener as a powerful unison statement right at the beginning. The scherzo is fleet-footed syncopated patter (again reminiscent of Borodin No. 2), while the finale goes nowhere to solving the so-called Finale problem, and indeed the composer never really professed himself satisfied with it. |
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