Weinberg / Gazarian - Kathrin Christians - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

The 24 preludes for cello solo by Mieczyslaw Weinberg have a particular history. Composed in the late sixties for Mstislav Rostropovich, he never actually played them. Their musical language is aphoristic, often brutal, provocative in it's inner conflict. It contains many different gestures and is very intense. To perform these preludes might have been problematic in the Soviet Union back then. Gidon Kremer has adapted the Preludes for solo violin and this is the world premiere recording of his adaptation. In his concerts, Kremer often plays them to projections of works by the Lithuanian photographer Antanas Sutkus in the background.

The idea of this album arose many years ago, at the time I released my second solo album Vergessene Weisen (forgotten melodies)- Russian music at the turn of the 20th century. What keeps amazing me is the number of gems that are still to be discovered in the piano repertoire of this period and the high quality of these rarely performed works. Of course, time eventually puts everything in it's place, though sometimes this process is rather slow. A thought that has often occurred to me is that, at the time when this music was being written, these Russian composers may well have bumped into people like Vladimir Lenin or Nikola Tesla on the streets of Paris, and nobody then knew the impact such people would have on the world. That said, this album was not intended as a compilation of rare Russian piano works, but as a lively musical extract from this exciting period in which Europe underwent rapid and dramatic change... (Anna Zassimova) Anna Zassimova studied piano under Vladimir Tropp, Michael Uhde, and Markus Strange. A versatile artist, she also has a doctorate in musicology and a degree in art history. She teaches at the University of Music in Karlsruhe and lives in Baden-Baden.

With his opera The Diary of Anne Frank (1968/69), by virtue of the subject alone, Grigory Frid could be sure of attracting attention beyond the borders of Russia. The remaining enormous oeuvre by the composer, covering mainly instrumental works, songs, radio and film music, still remains to be discovered and explored in depth. Both prior to and after the collapse of the Communist USSR, Frid was awarded the highest honors, e.g. The title of Artist of Merit (1986) and the Moscow Prize (1996). It is not erroneous to view Frid's aesthetic position in a propinquity to Dmitri Shostakovich, as well as a generation of younger composeres such as Edison Denisov, Sofia Gubaidulina and Alfred Schnittke. As in the cases of these composers, Frid's music is also positioned within a field of tension between following the great Russian tradition and the quest for possibilities of expression in keeping with new, modern and international trends. Album Tracks 1. Konzert FÜR Viola, Klavier Und Streichorchester, Op. 73 = Concerto for Viola, Piano and String Orchestra, Op. 73 (1981) 2. Symphonie NR. 3 FÜR Streichorchester Und Pauken, Op. 50 = Symphony No. 3 for String Orchestra and Timpanis, Op. 50 (1964) 3. Zwei Inventionen FÜR Streichorchester, Op. 46A = Two Inventions for String Orchestra, Op. 46A (1962)