Sergei ZHUKOV (b. 1951)
Piano Concerto Silentium (2001) [37:07]
Violin Concerto Angel's Day (2002?) [38:27]
Eleonora Bekova (piano); Elvira Bekova (violin)
Karelia State Symphony Orchestra/Marius Stravinsky
Moscow Symphony Orchestra/Konstantin Krimets.
rec. Russian Republic, 2010-11
World premiere recordings
CAMEO CLASSICS CC9047CD [75.00]
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
Something out of the ordinary rut. Surreal music that holds the listener.
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