Until now the wider musical world has been familiar with the
music of Sergei Zhukov through a Chandos CD (CHAN 9588) which
was issued in 1998 as part of their then New Direction
series. The disc contains the Concerto Mystery [45:24]
and the Concerto Grosso [20:41]. The Residentie Orchestra,
The Hague, then extensively used by Chandos, was conducted by
George Pehlivanian. You can still track down copies. It may
well be that the present Cameo Classics disc will re-ignite
sales of that Chandos disc. The other link between that disc
and this is the three Bekova sisters who feature in the Concerto
Grosso. Again they were a repeated presence in Chandos releases
of the late 1990s to mid 2000s.
The Bekova or Nakibekova sisters are Eleonora (piano), Elvira
(violin) and Alfia (cello). They are well known for their advanced
concert programming but greater familiarity attaches to
their Chandos CDs of Martinů piano
solos and trios
not to mention their Franck
and Rachmaninov. There’s also a coolly received Claudio
disc. Zhukov has written a concerto for each of the sisters.
Here we have the ones for violin and piano. The cello one is
to follow - I hope.
What of Zhukov and the music? He has a fairly thorough English
language website
which is well worth a look. He was born in the Ukraine and studied
music locally before moving to the Moscow Conservatory and graduating
in 1978. There are six ballets and more than handful of concertos
alongside plenty of chamber and vocal music. There are also
two symphonies, dating from 1985 and 2009. TV and movie music
jostles with a musical (Life of insects, or Deceit and Love)
staged in Moscow in 2010 and an oratorio Moments running
in succession.
Going by this Cameo disc his music can be both lyrical and strangely
avant-garde in a 1960s sense. The two aspects are made to mediate
in a most natural and fluent way. There’s something of
the ritual and the arcane about these two concertos. Ancient
Sorceries is the title of one of Algernon Blackwood’s
John Silence stories. That title could equally well have been
applied to these two large-scale works except that the pagan,
while not absent, makes way for Christian mysteries in the Violin
Concerto.
Silentium is in five movements which are contemplative
and manic-panic by turns. Impressions come and go: Stravinsky’s
Firebird in sinister mode, John Tavener, Scriabin, Bridge’s
Phantasm and Oration, Griffes’ Pleasure
Dome, Ives’ Unanswered Question and Ireland’s
Forgotten Rite and Legend - all of this given
a dissonant skew among the New Age devotions. The atmosphere
created is potent with strands of incense trailed by a slowly
swinging thurible contrasted with the insistent machine-gun
rhythmic tattoo of the piano (II: 3.44). In III there’s
the glint and shimmer of the tam-tam and some mercilessly jazzy
piano syncopation in IV. The soloist intones Mandelstam’s
poem ‘Silentium’ in the finale while the guitar
adds plangency and colour to the orchestra’s dripping
opalescent notes. Something rich and strange indeed, although
more pedestrian souls might regard it as hocus-pocus.
The oneiric theme is continued with the Violin Concerto which
is in four movements. The character of the music is incantatory
but not static. We are in strange realms but ones where the
ideas often seem to reference Russian nationalism of the late
19th century. In Morning Touch (I) the violin
speaks as a high, thin wail, trembling and distant. Messenger
(II) is full of hyper-tense excitement which is, in character,
part Midsummer Nights Dream and part chattering freshness
from Rachmaninov’s The Bells. In Vespers
plangent single rain-drop notes splash down gently. The finale
- Nightflight - links to the archingly sanguine melody
of Prokofiev’s Seventh Symphony and the faery mystery
of the same composer’s First Violin Concerto - wonderful
fluttering violin at 8:07. Along the way we meet, at 5:35-7:07,
a playful Nutcracker flight before the music ascends
to the stratosphere amid celesta sparkling and the shimmer of
silver chains.
Something out of the ordinary rut. Surreal music that holds
the listener.
Rob Barnett
Eleonora Bekova (piano); Elvira Bekova (violin) 