Sviridov: Russia Adrift - Song Cycle

Mazhara, Nikolai, Rimsky-Korsakov College of Music Female Choir, Serov, Yuri, Shkirtil, Lyudmila, St. Petersburg Radio and Television Children's Choir, St. Petersburg State Symphony Orchestra, Voloshchuk, Sergei

8.573685

Georgy Sviridov, a pupil of Shostakovich, composed in different worlds, on the one hand to please the Communist Party and on the other to express his own feelings. The edges of those two universes become somewhat blurred, as in the short cantata, Sneg idyot (Snow is Falling). Using words by Boris Pasternak which can be interpreted in different ways, and dating from 1965, it is scored for orchestra with female and children’s voices, its popular appeal doing much to make Sviridov’s name internationally popular.
Otchalivshaya Rus’ (Russia Adrift) was completed twelve years later to poems by Sergey Yesenin, Sviridov steering clear of Yesenin’s more contentious writing, concentrating on poems of Russia’s beautiful landscape and mysticism. Originally for voice and piano, it is an extended work lasting around thirty minutes, and is performed in an orchestration made last year by Leonid Rezetdinov. Twelve songs that paint pictures or moods, it is immediately attractive, though I would stop short of the booklet’s assertion that it is in the same musical world as that of Shostakovich. When the music allows the mezzo soloist to demonstrate her dynamic range, Mila Shkirtil, is a most impressive voice singing in the style of famous Russian mezzos of yesteryear, with warming vibrato and a tendency to scoop to notes that must sound thrilling in dramatic opera.
Music for Chamber Orchestra, contains an important part for solo piano, its style owing much to his illustrious mentor. Embracing both atonality and melodic invention, it is certainly the product of the twentieth century, its three movements—lasting around twenty minutes—a more persuasive and important testimony to Sviridov’s place in Russia’s musical history. The St. Petersburg performers are highly persuasive, in excellent sound. • © 2017 David’s Review Corner

CD x 1

Naxos

8/18/17

0747313368570