This disc presents piano works from the post-Great War and post-Second
World War periods. Two of them are Russian and two from Armenia whence the
pianist Diana Gabrielyan hails.
In his
Piano Sonata from 1924 Stravinsky was at pains to distance
himself from the ‘classical’ concept of the sonata. He couldn’t help himself
echoing the tell-tale sound of the great piano sonata composers he eschewed,
namely Clementi, Haydn and Mozart. The work gives us a brilliantly inventive
and thoroughly enjoyable take on the genre. Only a complete original like
Stravinsky could achieve this, particularly in the third movement. Whatever
his real intention the piece stands as a tribute to the sonata. It reminds
us how influential its great practitioners became and that it is still
favoured by so many composers today.
Stravinsky, like so many others in the early years of the twentieth
century was fascinated by jazz. His
Piano Rag Music and
Ragtime - both dating from 1919 - have much in common with other
works by those who enjoyed playing around with the syncopation so vital in
jazz: Schulhoff, Copland, Milhaud and Shostakovich. His short pieces have a
wonderfully witty and tongue-in-cheek take on the medium. Similarly
Stravinsky’s
Tango for Piano from 1940 draws on the essence of the
excitingly louche dance that emerged from the slums of Buenos Aires and
Montevideo in the 1890s. This is shone through the prism of his genius
resulting in a little gem. It has been transcribed for two pianos as well as
the interesting and unusual combination of 5 clarinets, 4 trumpets, 3
trombones, guitar, 3 violins, viola, cello and double bass; now I’d love to
hear that.
Shostakovich embraced the piano sonata from early in his career. This
first one dates from 1926 when he was 20 and demonstrates his advanced
thinking at such a young age. This is not at all what one might expect to
hear from someone of that age. That said it is not surprising to read that
it caused controversy among his teachers including a rift with his
composition teacher Maximilian Steinberg. It led his piano teacher Leonid
Nikolaev to comment that it was “a sonata for metronome, with piano
accompaniment”. It still sounds modern today so it is hard to imagine how it
struck the wider public at the time bearing in mind the riot that occurred
at the premičre of Stravinsky’s
The Rite of Spring thirteen years
earlier. Comparisons have been made between Shostakovich’s sonata and the
piano works of Alexander Mosolov whose
Iron Foundry, with its
‘avant-garde’ approach, was such a groundbreaking work when first performed
in 1926. Certainly there is evidence of influence from Prokofiev though it
sounds even more modern than his sonatas.
The rest of the disc is of works by two of the best known Armenian
composers. The Shostakovich is without doubt the meat in the sandwich
between the Stravinsky and the first three pieces by Babajanyan. His pieces
are ‘tame’ by comparison and from a totally different sound-world. Just as
the beginning of Shostakovich’s sonata comes as a shock after Stravinsky’s
embrace with the tango the opening of Babajanyan’s
Elegy is so
utterly different; the calm after the Shostakovich storm. It was written as
a tribute to the memory of Aram Khachaturian, the best known of all Armenian
composers, shortly after his death on 1 May 1978. Its gentle rhythms
redolent of the classic sounds of Armenian folk tunes suffuse the work with
melancholy. Written over forty years earlier, his
Impromptu is
another sad piece but the melodies in both are so pleasing that the sadness
is overcome by their pleasant nature.
Dance of Vagharshapat, so
named after Armenia’s ancient capital, is again dominated by folk melodies.
One could imagine it finding a worthy place as an encore.
While it is true that the preceding three works by Babajanyan are easy on
the ear his excursions into serialism are represented here by his
Six
Pictures. They are suitably serious in nature though the second
Armenian folk dance as its influence. The
Toccatina, the third of
the set, is exciting and wildly energetic and the concluding
Dance of
the Sasun People who fought hard against the Arabs in the ninth century
is fascinating and demands considerable virtuosity with its pattern of
repeated notes within an unrelenting framework.
Tigran Mansuryan is considered Armenia’s leading composer and his
Three Pieces date from the 1970s. They betray nothing of their
composer’s origins but are examples of the kind of music that was
particularly favoured by Britain’s musical establishment at the time when
tunes were very definitely out. Heaven knows what Shostakovich’s piano
teacher would have made of these. They do nothing for me. While I can
recognise the difficulty of achieving an acceptable performance I don’t know
how one can tell if it’s been achieved. Everything is so apparently random,
without form, or so it seems. Composers such as Schoenberg, Webern, Xenakis
and Boulez also experimented with similar seemingly ‘formless’ music, Webern
well before the 1970s. People like Mansuryan were not alone but I’m
old-fashioned and prefer something I can hum even if it is complex. This,
however, is not the sort I could manage to do that to.
Diana Gabrielyan is a name to watch out for as she plays extremely well. I
particularly enjoyed her performances of the Stravinsky and Shostakovich. I
also thoroughly approve of the stated aims of the new record label Odradek
which sets out to be ‘a non-profit artist-controlled label’. This should
give chances to young up-and-coming musicians who would otherwise find it
difficult to break into a recording career.
Steve Arloff
