Romualds KALSONS (1936-)
Violin Concerto (1978)
Cello Concerto (1970)
Symphonic Variations for piano and Orchestra
(1978)
Valdis Zarins (violin)
Agnese Rugevica (cello)
Janis Zilbers (piano)
Latvian National SO/Terje Mikkelsen
rec Riga, April-Oct 1999
SIMAX PSC1213
[72.33]
Crotchet
Kalsons, a pupil of Adolfs Skulte (himself a neglected lyrical symphonist
of the first rank - there are nine Skulte symphonies), is a prolific composer
who has written music in every genre. I do not know any of his other music
but going by these concertante works Kalsons is no anonymous purveyor of
fashion-victim trendiness. His music has substance, dissolute caprice and
colour.
Kalsons' Baltic fantasy flashes and crackles like nightmare lightning. In
the violin concerto the music progresses through four movements with an air
of desperate excitement. Think in terms of a razor wire update of the witchery
of Prokofiev's First Violin Concerto crossed with the remorseless sprint
of the finale of Khachaturian's concerto and in the finale we even get a
rumba 'engine-beat'. Of course the andante does provide a let-up but
this is an elegy over the sort of blasted landscape which Stravinsky created
for The Rite of Spring. At 6.13 [3] life returns in a sparkling violin
dance amid birdsong rising to two grand orchestral statements.
The single movement Symphonic Variations is contemporaneous with the
violin concerto. Brightly imagined romantic music with a stony and dark undertow
like a stress corroded version of Nights in the Gardens of Spain and
Totentanz again with high piping bird calls. This is like de Falla
crossed with Lutoslawski and with the lyrical weave of the Adolfs Skulte
symphonies.
The Cello Concerto is much earlier and shares with the other works orchestration
in restless motion. It lacks the lyrical pabulum of the violin concerto being
more obviously preoccupied with the metallic collision and violently clashing
masses typical of many Polish works of the 1960s and 1970s.
Music of cold and captivating brilliance. Highest recommendation.
Rob Barnett
See also Guest review from International
Record Review
