Kara Karayev - Symphony No. 1; Violin Concerto (Dmitry Yablonsky; Janna Gandelman)

Information

Composer: Kara Karayev

• (01) Symphony No. 1 in B minor
• (03) Violin Concerto

Janna Gandelman, violin
Kiev Virtuosi Symphony Orchestra
Dmitry Yablonsky, conductor

Date: 2018
Label: Naxos
https://www.naxos.com/catalogue/item.asp?item_code=8.573722

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Review

Azerbaijani composer Kara Karayev found his success in the USSR. He was born one year after the Russian Revolution and died seven years before the end of Soviet communism. According to Wiki, 1918 was the year when Azerbaijan declared its independence. It became part of the USSR in 1920. Karayev studied music in Baku - his birthplace - and in 1938 at the Moscow State Conservatoire with Anatoly Alexandrov. In 1945 he began attending Conservatoire classes conducted by Shostakovich who became, as Paul Conway writes in his excellent scene-setter for this CD, "a lifelong friend and a staunch supporter".

Karayev's star has waxed steadily over the last couple of decades. When Chandos recorded his ballet music we knew his music had made it, thirty-plus years after his death. The present disc stands to one side from the instantly accessible works like the The Seven Beauties, The Path of Thunder and Leyli and Mejnun. Delos, Naxos and, in years gone by, Russian Disc, have also mined those popular connections. The two works on this disc are made of taut and somewhat tougher 'ore'. They are in good hands as Yablonsky has already made two Karayev-Naxos discs, albeit with different orchestras (review review). One of those earlier Naxos discs straddles the popular Karayev and the 12-tone Karayev.

The First Symphony can be bracketed with two other wartime Soviet first symphonies earlier and later than the Karayev: the Boris Tchaikovsky (1947) and the Weinberg (1942). It's contemporary with Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 8, Prokofiev’s Ballad of an Unknown Boy, Miaskovsky’s Symphony No. 24, Knipper’s Symphony No. 8, Khachaturian’s Symphony No. 2, Polovinkin’s Symphonies Nos. 7 and 8, Popov’s Symphony No. 2 Motherland and Tubin’s Symphony No. 4 while pre-dating Prokofiev's Fifth by a year. The first movement of the Karayev is tender and tense. Ruthless little march figures lend sweep and momentum. Both folksy and clamorous in the manner of Shostakovich's Leningrad, the effect is never raucous. The second movement opens, glum and sorrowing, but finds time at 5:30 to speak of "life's carousel" where the music is populist in the manner of Khachaturian’s Masquerade as well as tragic and intoxicating. Later the music scurries along at headlong manic pace but is then muses, predominantly subdued and melancholy, ending in a far from comforting long shallow grade into silence.

If the First Symphony is determined but accessible, the three-movement Violin Concerto is, as Mr Conway says, the fruit of a new serialist direction. This was taken after a Soviet delegation visit to the United States in 1961 when Karayev met Stravinsky in Los Angeles. The Concerto was written in the same year in which the composer won the Lenin Prize for his second ballet score, The Path of Thunder. Interestingly the ballet remained in Karayev's inventive populist style. The Concerto was premiered in 1968 by Leonid Kogan in a concert celebrating Karayev’s 50th birthday. The Concerto, which will be familiar if you have the Russian Revelation CD featuring Gidon Kremer, is moody, passionate and exotically dissonant. It maps out territory occupied by Szymanowski on one hand and Alban Berg on the other. It ends in sourly ambivalent victory and does so at a blistering pace.

There are hours of Karayev still to emerge. His worklist includes a mix of allusive titles both predictable and surprising, even if some of them may yield a shudder in some quarters: two string quartets (1942, 1946); Motherland, a four-act opera (composed with A. Gadzhiev) (1945); Three Nocturnes for singer and jazz orchestra after words of Langston Hughes (1958); Our Party, a cantata for solo voices, chorus and orchestra (1959); Tale of the Mineral Oil Worker at the Caspian Sea for singer or chorus and piano or orchestra (1954); Film music, Vietnam (1955); Violin Sonata in D minor (1960); Hymn to Friendship for solo voices, chorus and orchestra (1969); Lenin, oratorio for speaker, chorus and orchestra (1970); Tenderness, a 'mono-opera' after Henri Barbusse for woman’s voice and chamber orchestra (1972); The Impetuous Gascons, a musical comedy after Rostand's Cyrano de Bergerac (1973) and The House of the Pigeon, a symphony for children’s chorus, mixed chorus and orchestra after Francisco Goya (1980).

Both of the present works hold more than enough to intrigue the adventurous listener,. They are presented with the advantages of good documentation, convincingly dedicated playing, and an honest upfront recording which communicates plenty of vivid detail. The composer's as yet unrecorded Second Symphony dates from three years after the First. Hope springs … The recording sessions for this disc spanned five days so perhaps other Karayev was scheduled.

-- Rob Barnett, MusicWeb International

More reviews:
http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2018/May/Karayev_sy1_8573722_NB.htm
https://www.allmusic.com/album/kara-karayev-symphony-no-1-violin-concerto-mw0003150692
https://www.naxos.com/reviews/reviewslist.asp?catalogueid=8.573722&languageid=EN

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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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Janna Gandelman was born in Kishinev, Moldavia in 1967. After immigration to Israel in 1979 she was accepted to be a part of the American-Israel Cultural Foundation, performing in many countries around the world and winning several competitions. Gandelman has been a member of many acclaimed music ensembles in Israel as well as being concertmaster of several Israeli orchestras. She has given masterclasses all over the world and teaches at Jerusalem Conservatory Hassadna and Nazareth Conservatory. Gandelman plays a J.B. Guadagnini loaned by the Yehuda Zisapel Foundation.
https://www.naxos.com/person/Janna_Gandelman/302824.htm

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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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