Leningrad Harp and Concertos
Tatiana Tower (harp)
Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra; Leningrad Chamber Orchestra/Eduard Serov; Taneyev Quartet
rec. 1978-84, Leningrad
NORTHERN FLOWERS NFPMA99140 [76:45]
If you are a devotee of harp playing, then alongside representation from such icons of the instrument as Lily Laskine, Osian Ellis, Nicanor Zabaleta, Yolanda Kondonassis, Elinor Bennett, Sandrine Chatron and Eleanor Hudson you will need to count Tatiana Tower. Tower was unknown to me until this disc came along but the notes tell me that she became principal harp of Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra under Evgeny Mravinsky in 1968; there she carved a place of great artistic honour and affection among audiences. She was born in Moscow in 1945 and played the harp from the age of four. Studies were pursued at the Gnessin College and Moscow Conservatory.
Closely and plangently recorded, the Debussy registers every quiet gesture and preserves a sense of legato in an instrument that is more at home with percussive staccato. Much the same goes
for the Onegin fantasy, as arranged most skilfully and movingly by Ekaterina Walter-Kühne. Xenia Erdely’s harp arrangement of Tchaikovsky’s
‘November’ has a slowly oozing charm, though it’s a notch down from the imaginative Onegin piece.
This disc in the label’s Leningrad series casts off the constraints of the other volumes in being artist-centred and accommodates music by non-Russians. It’s not just the lusciously luxurious Debussy but also the three-movement Ginastera Concerto. Its buoyant breeziness is nicely taken up by soloist and orchestra, delivering Latin-American virtuosity and coruscating fantasy in the outer movements as well as a dissonant foggy miasma in the central one.
The two works by Kikta are the work of a musically very productive Ukrainian who became Chairman of the Russian Harp Society. The Frescoes of St. Sophia of Kiev concerto is in four movements. This is in the spirit of Respighi’s Roman poems but with bejewelled detail and activity. Included is a measure of Russian Orthodox chant as well as the grandeur and reverence of bells in the first movement. The romance of the flute in the short third movement makes a telling influence - almost Richard Rodney Bennett in 1970s soft-focus film music mode. Much of the music is ethereal and not at all the obvious showstopper you might have expected. The finale has the sort of ‘Tudor’ dignity I have come to expect from Arnold Rosner.
Ten years after the Frescoes work comes another concertante piece. Pacing out a moving path among episodes of dank melancholic meditation comes the single-movement Queen of Spades Fantasy. Virtuosity is demanded of the harpist but here display is suited to quiet thoughtfulness and understatement. The work is dedicated to Tower.
The insert booklet is gratifyingly detailed by an anonymous annotator. The English is rendered, most fluently, by Sergei Suslov, a Northern Flowers regular.
Harp connoisseurs need this CD as a vivid reminder of the musicianship of Tatiana Tower.
Rob Barnett
Contents:
Valery KIKTA (b.1941)
Frescoes of St. Sophia of Kiev, Op 50 (1972) [24:17]
Fantasy on Themes from Tchaikovsky's opera The Queen of Spades (1982) [10:18]
Alberto GINASTERA (1916-1983)
Harp Concerto, Op 25 (1956) [22:43]
Claude DEBUSSY (1862-1918)
Danses sacrée et danses profane for harp and strings (1904) [9:21]
Ekaterina WALTER-KÜHNE (1870-1930)
Fantasy on Tchaikovsky's opera Eugene Onegin [6:58]
Pyotr Ilyich TCHAIKOVSKY (1840-1893)
The Seasons, Op 37b: No 11, November. On the Troika (arr. X. Erdely for harp) [3:12]
