Fikret AMIROV (1922-1984)
Symphony ‘to the memory of Nizami’ (1941) [21:42]
One thousand and one nights – suite, arr. Badalbeyli and Yablonsky (1979/2017) [35:38]
Kyiv Virtuosi Symphony Orchestra/Dmitry Yablonsky
rec. 15-16 April 2018, Large concert studio of the Ukrainian National Radio, Kyiv
NAXOS 8.573803 [57:22]
On the very day that I was writing this review, one of our more prolific MusicWeb message board contributors, Ford, added his own suggestion to the thread Masterpieces which don’t get their due. It read “Amirov’s symphony for strings. There was also a great disc of his “symphonic mugams” on Naxos”.
Ford’s post encouraged me to use the MusicWeb search engine to investigate other recordings of Amirov’s music, an exercise that quickly turned up a series of generally very positive reviews. After listening to that aforementioned disc of mugams, for instance, my colleague Brian Reinhart described the scores as “hugely attractive at the surface level, because many of the tunes are great, the dances are all energetic and brightly scored, and the parade of exotic sounds and colours never ceases…”, before going on to address a heartfelt plea to the producers: “Naxos, please let this CD be only the beginning!” (review). Meanwhile, Ian Lace thought the composer’s Azerbaijan mugam ‘Kyurdi Ovsgari’ “a delight” (review), while other reviewers including Rob Barnett (review and review)
and Steve Arloff (review) expressed equally positive reactions to Amirov’s music. I could easily carry on, but will instead encourage you to use the search engine to explore our archives for yourself.
All this came, I must admit, as something of a pleasant surprise because I had never encountered Amirov’s music before. Indeed, I admit to having asked to review this disc primarily because it offered me, as a great lover of dance, the opportunity to hear music taken from a completely unfamiliar ballet - his 1979 two-Act One thousand and one nights, focussed, so I gathered, on the same central characters portrayed by Rimsky-Korsakov in his familiar symphonic suite Scheherazade.
A filmed Kremlin Ballet performance of the complete One thousand and one nights, posted on YouTube, reveals that the suite encompasses just over a third of Amirov’s complete score. I strongly recommend that you watch the ballet in full if you can. It will give you a good idea of the story, which in turn helps make far more sense of – and give greater coherence to – the sequence of the music included in the stand-alone suite. The latter is, by the way, presented here in the form of a 2017 revised version by its conductor Dmitry Yablonsky and this is its first recording. Sadly, it does not include the wordless vocal contribution that both opens the Kremlin Ballet performance and returns intermittently thereafter, thereby contributing an attractive extra layer of atmospheric colour to the scoring.
As for Amirov’s music itself, I concur with my colleagues in finding his style a most attractive one. Its main characteristics are those identified by Brian Reinhart in his earlier review. Strong, insistent rhythms are juxtaposed with beguiling eastern-flavoured melodies, while the composer deftly utilises a palette of orchestral colour ranging from bold primary hues (IX. Chase) to more subtly and delicately limned shades (VIII. Sadness of Scheherazade). Very frequently reminiscent of Khachaturian in its style, Amirov’s score perfectly underpins a fast-moving story that portrays Scheherazade not as the languorous story-teller of Rimsky’s imagination but as something of an energetic swinger: indeed, its opening section starts very much with a bang, as it were, by depicting nothing less than an orgy reaching its climax at Sultan Shahriar’s palace. (Of course, nothing is ever really new, for as far back as 1910 a Ballets Russes production had portrayed an equally salacious sultana hosting a full scale bacchanale to the lively Festival at Baghdad music from Rimsky’s Scheherazade).
The other piece presented on this CD is more serious in tone – a symphony for string orchestra that Amirov composed to commemorate the 12th century Azerbaijani Muslim poet and philosopher Nizami Ganjavi. I’d guess that this might be the same symphony for strings that Ford considers one of those unsung masterpieces, although I had more confidence in that supposition before I came across a hint that the composer may sometimes have used identical titles for different pieces of music (review). In this new disc’s string symphony, an intense opening movement, marked allegro maestoso, ultimately sublimates its brisker elements and emphasises the maestoso, as if Amirov feels the need to acknowledge his deep reverence for the poet before he can move on. The three subsequent movements – a skittish allegretto giocoso, a more sinuous andante molto sostenuto and an allegro con brio that buzzes with lively energy – are all expressed with greater concision and less emotional intensity.
Both performances on this disc promote Amirov’s music very effectively and the accomplished playing of the Kyiv musicians – whether as strings alone or as the full orchestra - is heard in finely engineered sound. Such all-round excellence only makes one regret even more that the opportunity wasn’t taken to record another piece or two: after all, at less than an hour in length this is an underfilled CD.
Rob Maynard
Previous review: Jim Westhead
