Leonid DESYATNIKOV (b.1955)
Return for oboe, clarinet, two violins, viola, cello and tape [10:06]
Du côté de chez Swan for two pianos [12:34]
Variations on the Obtaining of a Dwelling for cello and piano [8:34]
Wie der Alte Leiermann ... for violin and piano [14:40]
The Leaden Echo for voice(s) and instruments to the words of Gerard
Manley Hopkins [13:49]
Main Theme from motion picture Moscow Nights arranged for violin and
string ensemble by Roman Mints [3:40]
Alexei Goribol (piano); Anton Dressler (clarinet); Anna Panina (violin); Fedor
Lednev (conductor); Pavel Stepin (double-bass); Serj Poltavski (viola); Evgeny
Rumyantsev (cello); Petr Kondrashin (cello); Dmitri Sharov (trombone); Yuri
Kolosov (trombone); Kirill Koloskov (trombone); Dmitri Vlassik (timpani);
Asya Sorshneva (violin
rec. Mosfilm Studios, Moscow, GDRZ Studio 1, Moscow, and Academy of Choral
Art, Moscow, 2009-2010 (Variations on the Obtaining of a Dwelling, rec. 1995).
Stereo. DDD
QUARTZ MUSIC QTZ 2087 [65:24] 
Leonid Desyatnikov is a Russian composer who is very difficult to categorise.
In fact, even calling him Russian is to oversimplify, as he was born in the
Ukraine, although he is now a big wheel in Moscow. As with almost every Russian
composer since the 1980s, you can attach a series of "post”s to his work:
post-tonal, post-Romantic, post-minimalist. If all this sounds like it is
going to add up to post-modernism, that's fair enough, but Desyatnikov's post-modernism
is so subtle and so idiosyncratic that it seems to fall well outside the commonly
accepted boundaries.
Relationships with the music of the past – Haydn, Saint-Saens, Schubert –
are the basis of many works on this disc, but in most cases, you'd have to
read that in the liner to know. Unlike Schnittke, the most obvious Russian
predecessor in this respect, Desyatnikov cultivates healthy and close relationships
with his historical models. So there is none of that anxiety of influence
that you find played out in Schnittke, most often through the collision of
musical styles. Instead, Desyatnikov reinvents his personal voice for each
piece, bringing in stylistic elements of the earlier work, reinventing it
for modern ears.
That could sound presumptuous, and I suspect that many of Desyatnikov's listeners
are unlikely to appreciate having their musical tastes anticipated in this
way. Even so, his music works. A combination of astute cultural cosmopolitanism
and sheer quality of compositional technique allows him to get away with his
various indulgences. His music is largely tonal, or at least consonant, yet
there is something eerie that is difficult to pin down. Like many of his Russian
predecessors, Desyatnikov has worked extensively in the cinema, and visual
editing techniques have clearly been influential in the way he structures
his work. Jump cuts between one relatively static minimalist texture and another
happen in a way that you would never find in Glass or Reich, pulling the listener
out of the comfortable situation they have just been in and dropping them
in a different environment entirely.
Each of the works on the disc is scored for a different ensemble. Return
is for winds and strings, acting as a sort of imitation of a Japanese Gagaku
orchestra. In fact, the work is all about the issue of imitation. Desyatnikov
takes a recording of traditional Japanese music, arranges it in the most culturally
insensitive way possible for Western instruments in Western temperament, then
juxtaposes this sanitised version against the original by playing the original
version on a tape at the end.
Du cote de chez Swan has nothing obvious to do with Proust. Instead
it is an arrangement of Saint-Saens’ The Swan for two pianos in an
aggressive minimalist style. Why? It's hard to say really. The composer says
that it is, amongst other things, a homage to the Ligeti's Three Pieces
for Two Pianos, and there are shades of that great work, but most of it
is closer to American minimalist models. Variations on the Obtaining of
a Dwelling and Wie der Alte Leiermann ... are solo works with
piano accompaniment for cello and violin respectively. The first is based
on Haydn and the second on Schubert, but I'm only reading that out of the
liner; I wouldn't have worked it out for myself. The violinist is Roman Mints,
a Russian who has been doing a great deal in recent years to promote the works
of his compatriot composers. This album, I suspect, is his project, and he
certainly puts in a convincing performance here.
"Leaden" is a very appropriate word to appear in the title of The
Leaden Echo. This Gerard Manley Hopkins setting is long, dour and repetitive.
There is nothing wrong with a composer taking his work seriously nor of setting
downbeat words in a downbeat style, but it does take some perseverance on
the part of the listener to get to the end. The last track, the theme tune
from Moscow Nights, gives us a taste of Desyatnikov's work for the
big screen, which is competent, atmospheric and melodic, but not half as clever
as the concert works that precede it.
The performances and sound quality are good. A little more definition in the
piano sound might have been nice in Du cote de chez Swan, and pedantic
Anglophone listeners would probably appreciate more clarity in the diction
of Manley Hopkins' words in The Leaden Echo, although it is difficult
to tell if the sound production or the singer are to blame there. Otherwise,
this is an excellent introduction to the work of one of Russia's most important
living composers. It is beguiling and curiously disturbing music, despite
its almost uniformly civilised surface. The music stays with you in an unsettling
way, and even after repeated listenings it is impossible to tell why.
Gavin Dixon
The music stays with you in an unsettling way, and even after repeated listenings
it is impossible to tell why.