Acte Préalable
is doing a fine job in bringing to the
public’s attention the works of some
forgotten Polish composers. Taraseievich
was actually born in Vilnius of an aristocratic
family. After military college he moved
to St Petersburg where he took composition
lessons from Glazunov and pursued his
enthusiasm for Belorussian folk music.
War service in 1915 was followed by
a gilded stay in the Tsar’s Winter Palace,
a brief idyll cut short by the Civil
War, at which point he returned to his
family’s estate. Soviet Belorussia was
a hazardous place for an aristocrat
and landowner and, though he wrote music,
Taraseievich made no attempt to publish
any and seems to have kept his head
down. In 1939 he escaped to Latvia,
thus avoiding both the Germans and the
Soviets, finally emerging in Poland.
He scrabbled around for work – as a
restaurant pianist and later for the
radio – but he also taught. He failed
to gain admittance to the Polish Composers
Union. One of his best-known pupils
was Jerzy Maksymiuk and another was
Anatol Cherepinsky who preserved his
teacher’s manuscripts for decades. It’s
principally thanks to Cherepinsky that
this music has survived. Taraseievich’s
health worsened during the 1950s and
he died in 1961.
Though he did write
a deal of vocal and instrumental music
his piano works are the most important
part of his output. The Prelude and
Toccata, despite the austere Bachian
intimations, is full of rolled chords,
romanticised gestures – Chopin, Liszt
and Brahms are the influences. The First
Suite comprises four delicious miniatures,
the second of which has an elfin warmth
and the Mazurka of which is a real music
box charmer (shades of Liadov’s Musical
Snuff Box). The Second Suite – we have
three of the movements here – is full
of nostalgia and limpid recollection
– warm, old-fashioned, unpretentious.
His songs are worthy
of note though the performances, whilst
enthusiastic, are very strenuous. The
Song dedicated to Grikovsky is in echt
late nineteenth century Russian style
- a muse steeped in melancholy. There
are also some a capella songs – the
Mournful Songs - which belie
their title almost completely, unless
their mournfulness is clothed in superficial
jollity and artifice. The songs for
soprano are again rather generic, though
the third, a lullaby, has a landler
like delicacy that impresses. Once again
the performances are rather raw. The
recital, recorded live, at a concert
in Minsk ends with three piano pieces.
The Sad Waltz fuses Bach with
Chopin and is a passionate declamation,
one of the most immediately appealing
things on the disc. It shows both the
limits of his ambition but also the
strength of his accomplishment in miniatures.
Taraseievich’s life
was clearly one of rupture and flight
after his early days of luxury. His
was a steady voice, circumscribed but
lyrical and not developing much beyond
Liadov as a model. This is a worthy
tribute to him – well documented and
biographically full. The performances,
as noted, are sometimes rather hit and
miss and the piano has not been that
sympathetically recorded But a deserved
tribute nonetheless.
Jonathan Woolf
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