Kara Karayev - The Seven Beauties; The Path of Thunder (Dmitry Yablonsky)

Information

Composer: Kara Karayev

• (01) The Seven Beauties – Ballet Suite
• (13) The Path of Thunder – Ballet Suite No. 2

Royal Philharmonic Orchestra
Dmitry Yablonsky, conductor

Date: 2013
Label: Naxos
https://www.naxos.com/catalogue/item.asp?item_code=8.573122

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Review

ARTISTIC QUALITY: 9 / SOUND QUALITY: 9

Kara Karayev’s ballet music isn’t quite as unknown as the rest of his output. This exact coupling was released previously on Melodiya, then Olympia, and now evidently reissued on Delos. Fans of the brilliant and eccentric comedian Ernie Kovacs might notice that he used the concluding Procession from The Seven Beauties in one of his sketches. This was not unusual: Kovacs used Bartók as well. That earlier recording appeared, I believe, on Westminster and has never made it to CD.

The Seven Beauties, in any case, is a wonderful fairytale ballet from 1953 that sounds a bit like Khachaturian, a bit like Prokofiev, a bit like Shostakovich, and a lot like Karayev. The Path of Thunder is a socialist realist piece about love in apartheid South Africa, so unlike, for example, the picture of tolerance and brotherly love that was Russian in 1958 (never mind today). In any case, the music in both works isn’t just ethnic tunes over percussive ostinatos, but, especially in The Path of Thunder, it contains longer pieces with distinctive themes, substantially developed. It has real depth, and it’s beautifully scored.

This performance featuring the Royal Philharmonic under Dmitry Yablonsky is, not surprisingly, a bit more subtle and sophisticated than the rough-and-ready Melodiya competition, and it is very well recorded. Naxos has already devoted a disc to Karayev’s music (including his Third Symphony), and we badly need a systematic treatment of this very worthy contemporary of Shostakovich. Let’s hope that Naxos has more in the pipeline.

-- David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday

More reviews:
https://www.gramophone.co.uk/review/karayev-the-seven-beauties-the-path-of-thunder
http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2014/Jan14/Karayev_ballets_8573122.htm
http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2014/Oct14/Karayev_ballets_8573122.htm
http://www.classical.net/music/recs/reviews/n/nxs73122a.php
https://www.naxos.com/reviews/reviewslist.asp?catalogueid=8.573122&languageid=EN#120511
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Karayev-Beauties-Thunder-Ballet-Suites/dp/B00FZ97Y8C

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Kara Karayev (February 5, 1918 in Baku – May 13, 1982 in Moscow) was a prominent Azerbaijani composer of the Soviet period. Among his teachers were Georgi Sharoyev, Leonid Rudolf and Uzeyir Hajibeyov at the Azerbaijan State Conservatoire, and Dmitri Shostakovich at the Moscow State Conservatoire. Karayev wrote nearly 110 musical pieces, including ballets, operas, symphonic and chamber pieces, solos for piano, cantatas, songs, and marches, and rose to prominence not only in Azerbaijan SSR but also in the rest of the Soviet Union and worldwide. Karayev died in Moscow and was buried in Baku.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gara_Garayev

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Dmitry Yablonsky (born 1962 in Moscow) is a Russian classical cellist and conductor. His mother is famed pianist Oxana Yablonskaya. Yablonsky was educated at the Juilliard School of Music and Yale University. Among his teachers are Lorne Munroe, Aldo Parisot, Zara Nelsova and Otto Werner Muller. For several years Yablonsky has been Principal Guest Conductor of Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra and has conducted many orchestras all over the world. He has made more than 70 recordings as conductor and cellist for Naxos, Erato-Warner, Chandos, Belair Music, Sonora, Connoisseur Society.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dmitry_Yablonsky

http://www.dmitryablonsky.com/

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