Search - Alexander Tcherepnin, Robert Whitney, Louisville Orchestra :: Alexander Tcherepnin: Piano Concerto No. 2 / Symphony No. 2 / Suite for Orchestra

In a style evocative of early Prokofiev and Stravinsky, Tche

Discophage | France | 11/16/2007

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Alexander Tcherepnin (1899-1977) hasn't established a stature as one of the most prominent early 20th-Century composers, on a part, say, with, Stravinsky, Bartok, Prokofiev or Shostakovich. His reputation with music lovers interested in off-the-beaten track repertoire is rather that of a minor master, who maintained a presence on the fringe of the concert programs and recording schedules. When I started collecting records, in the last years of the LP era, he had virtually disappeared, presumably suffering the fate of all composers save those recognized as the great masters of their days: they die, they are not around anymore to foster their own music, they fall into oblivion. Nearly 25 years of CDs have been a boon for all these second-tier composers and Tcherepnin is fairly well represented on that media, thanks to labels such as BIS, Olympia or Hong Kong/Marco Polo (search Tcherepnin on this website).



But this reissue of recordings made by the Louisville Orchestra between 1954 (Suite for Orchestra) and 1965 (Symphony) and first published on their First Edition Recordings LPs serve as a useful reminder that Tcherepnin did enjoy quite a reputation during his lifetime. With nearly an hour of music, it makes him one of Louisville's favored composers. It is also interesting to note that "in 1967, Tcherepnin became the second White Russian émigré composer officially invited back to the USSR for concerts, the first having been Igor Stravinsky five years earlier. In Moscow, Tcherepnin was soloist in his Second Piano Concerto, and many of the Soviet Union's finest musicians, among them Emil Gilels and Sviatoslav Richter, came to honor him" (quoting the biography by Phillip Ramey on the official Tcherpnin website). Only the 1953 Suite was a Louisville commission, but all three pieces featured on the present disc were recording premieres. The Symphony resulted from a commission from Tcherepnin's publisher made in 1945 but wasn't completed until 1951. On the other hand the Concerto is an early work, dating from Tcherepnin's Parisian years in 1922-3. The stylistic differences aren't glaring.



The Piano Concerto starts as a dynamic and brassy march, introduced by a sardonic Barnum-like theme intoned by a blaring trumpet against motoric piano pounding. Tcherepnin shows a deft hand at developing and varying this single theme, which forms the basis of the concerto, and submitting it to a variety of moods, epic, rhythmic, assertive, mechanic (try the solo piano cadenza at 7:41, sounding like clockwork Bach), dramatic, lyrical, dreamy, nostalgic. His approach to form is quite original, with a free and original construction in the shape of a single movement in widely enlarged classical sonata structure, with part of the development consisting of twelve variations on a modification of the main theme introduced by a plaintive cello at 7:15. Tcherepnin also has a fine ear for orchestral color. The style is broadly reminiscent of early Prokofiev (and the concerto would make a worthy companion piece on disc to Prokofiev's first two, but also to Antheil's first - see my review of Piano Concertos of the 1920s) and of the early Soviet avant-garde composers such as Mossolov (Alexander Mossolov: Works for Piano - Concerto for Piano & Orchestra, Op. 14 / Two Nocturnes, Op. 15 / Three Pieces & Dance, Op. 23 a & b / Sonata No. 4, Op. 11 / Sonata No.5, Op. 12), but Tcherepnin is sufficiently personal not to sound derivative. In 1961 Louisville still recorded in mono but the sound has depth, and you don't really perceive that it is mono until you go to the next, full 1965 stereo track.



The Second Symphony is on a same par. Again it is colorfully orchestrated and the language broadly points to Stravinsky, but, in its sharp and angular rhythmic vigor it is the neo-classical Stravinsky of the 1930s and 1940s. The 1st movement starts in a light-hearted, balletic mood. It could be music written by Sauguet, or by an American composer for Balanchine. But a more somber atmosphere sets in at 5:24, with a kind of funeral march vaguely evocative of Honegger. The next three movements follow each other without break. The boisterous third movement (starting at 4:39 into track 3) dashes ahead like a zipping train, and in the finale, introduced at 8:43 by a threatening brass chorale followed by more woodwind balletic chirping, some echoes of Petrushka's fair can be heard besides the neo-classical Stravinsky. But it is the second movement that is the most striking and the one in which Tcherepnin's fine sense of orchestral color is most in evidence, beginning as it does with beautifully hushed violins playing in their upper registers, followed by lush bird songs played by woodwinds and solo violin. It has the refinement and subtlety of passages in Ibert's Ports of Calls or Ravel's Rhapsodie Espagnole (the beginning of Villa Lobos' Little Train of the Caipira also comes to mind, see my review of Villa Lobos: The Little Train of the Caipira; Antill: Corroboree; Ginastera: Estancia; Panambi).



I am not so taken with the Suite for Orchestra. Again it is very balletic in its graphic descriptiveness - it portrays "the City", with its morning church bells, chirping birds, two lovers walking - re the composer's own description - "bashfully through the lanes of the park" (maudlin violin theme) etc. It could be the music to a Vincente Minelli film or Broadway production. The second movement depicts "conflict", in a mildly modernist language that could be anyone's. No match to Bernstein's Jets and Sharks. The 3rd movement is the most effective - a somber and dramatic lament evoking the individual's loneliness in the midst of the city crowd. The finale is a boisterous but unremarkable orchestral dance - again the kind any second-tier American composer of the days could have written for a Balanchine or Martha Graham ballet. The 1954 mono sound is also more distant.



Still Tcherepnin's is a voice that deserves not to be forgotten, and this First Edition release serves that purpose well. The same CD exists under another entry, and you might find it cheaper there: Alexander Tcherepnin

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