Herman GALYNIN (1922-1966)
Scherzo for Violin and String Orchestra (1966) [4:59]
Aria for Violin and String Orchestra (1959) [7:08]
Suite for String Orchestra (1949) [20:29]
String Quartet No. 1 (1947) [20:59]
String Quartet No. 2 (1956) [11:33]
Anastasia Latysheva (violin)
Academy of Russian Music/Ivan Nikiforchin
Arina Minaeva (violin), Anastasia Benci, Kseniia Kharitonova (viola), Anna Scherbakova (cello)
rec. 2019, Studio 1, Production Complex Tonstudio, Mosfilm, Moscow
TOCCATA CLASSICS TOCC0514 [65:12]
That a composer so admired by his teachers Myaskovsky and Shostakovich should now be so little known is largely explained by his early death and by the relative paucity of recordings devoted to his music. Herman Galynin’s longstanding friend Karen Khachaturian remembered his piano performances for their technical control and for the expressive shadings of which Galynin was capable. Unstintingly admired by his seniors even whilst at college, his life saw a descent into mental illness – either schizophrenia or bipolar disorder. He battled unstintingly against his illness, continuing, in moments of remission, to compose. To what extent Tikhon Khrennikov’s disgusting denunciation of Galynin’s First Piano Concerto – derided as per usual as ‘formalist’ alongside the works of his great teachers in 1948 – exacerbated his mental instability can’t, one supposes, be known for sure but it clearly had a terrible effect on him.
The five works for strings in this disc, of which the Scherzo is the first ever recording and the remainder first digital recordings, offers an exemplary opportunity to consider this remarkable composer in works that date from 1947 to the year of his death barely twenty years later. It’s clear from the String Quartet No.1, the earliest work here, that though conventionally structured in four movements the music is full of constant motion and variegated sense of colour. Though it’s technically complex it still exudes a mellifluous aura in its opening movement and a sense of taut, almost Stravinskian rhythmic intensity in the Scherzo. Weaving the Song of the Volga Boatmen in the slow movement’s variations might be thought quixotic and populist but the languid floatation of the music, its iteration witnessing changes of rhythm, colour, articulation and mood, is so persuasive that one succumbs to the vivid sense of characterisation and vitality that courses throughout. The finale’s occasional folkloric asperity, subject to splendid development, caps a youthful work of outstanding energy.
The much more concise 1956 Second Quartet lasts less than twelve minutes and was his last work for chamber forces, composed whilst he was in a clinic. There is something infinitely touching about the chaste, brief and vocalised opening Adagio, though the contrast of a Shostakovich-like Galop in the Allegretto provides evidence of his continuing life force – complete with a gorgeous B section. Tender poetry saturates the Andante, ardent but nobly restrained, and there is folkloric intensity in the finale. Only the finale breaches the three-minute mark in this performance, but one feels as if one has been privy to a far greater range of expression than can be measured in mere temporal terms.
The Suite for String Orchestra dates from 1949 and opens not unlike Tippett’s Corelli Fantasia Concertante, though Galynin is more explicitly baroque. Taut, crisp but elastically lyric in the opening, motorically brilliant in the Scherzo, and droll in the Intermezzo with material resurfacing from the opening movement, Galynin proves an expert orchestrator. His finale is a true summation in its boldness that works in, appropriately, a strong baroque statement.
The 1959 Aria for violin and string orchestra is expressive and freely moving – warm but not cloying. This is a songful, lyric work, never seeking to break bonds stylistically, but formally within the Russian lineage in concertante works for the violin. His final work was also for violin, the Scherzo for Violin and String Orchestra. There are Khachaturian-reminiscent elements to the attaca passages, with a rather sultry Iberian B section, the violin extolling over orchestral pizzicati, before returning to the skittering and resinous drama securely in the tradition of brilliant violin showpieces.
Much of the success of this disc rests with the excellent performers, with Anastasia Latysheva taking solo violin honours as well as alternating first and second violin in the Quartets. Her colleagues are equally praiseworthy. Yuri Abdokov’s booklet essay is memorably good – why can’t other labels emulate Toccata’s level of scholarship and care? – and the only (small) demerit is a rather boomy acoustic in the orchestral pieces. It galvanizes the Academy of Russian Music – lining up 5-5-3-3-2 – to almost Stokowskian proportions. But pass over that quickly as Galynin’s music is the thing and it is, to me, both humbling and elevating to hear how much he gave to his music, notwithstanding the circumstances of his life. Many other composers have written far less of value in far greater a period of time than Galynin, who died at forty-four.
Jonathan Woolf
