Various Composers - Rapid Movement (Dmitry Masleev)

Information

• (01) Alexander Tsfasman - Suite for piano and orchestra
• (05) Dmitri Shostakovich - Concerto No. 1 for piano, trumpet and string orchestra in C minor, Op. 35
• (09) Nikolai Kapustin - Concerto No. 2 for piano and orchestra, Op. 14

Dmitry Masleev, piano
Leonid Guriev, trumpet
Siberian State Symphony Orchestra
Vladimir Lande, conductor

Date: 2019
Label: Melodiya
https://melody.su/en/catalog/classic/41535/

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Review

Flying under the disc title ‘Rapid Movement’ this release scores heavily by including music by Tsfasman and Kapustin. The centrepiece may well be Shostakovich’s First Concerto but I suspect it’s rather more to the other two pieces that attention will be focused.

Alexander Tsfasman will be known to those with a penchant for the development of jazz in the Soviet Union. He was a famous big band leader as well as being a brilliant pianist – he’d been a pupil of Felix Blumenfeld at the Moscow Conservatory, so his training had been classical. He pushed his jazz career whilst earning essential finances by working as a ballet accompanist and composer for the Bolshoi Theatre. He backed well-known singers on 78s and recorded film soundtracks and during the War led the All-Union Radio Committee jazz band. In 1944 he sent Benny Goodman his Intermezzo for clarinet and orchestra and the following year he composed the Suite heard in this recording.

Tsfasman was the first Russian pianist to perform Rhapsody in Blue and his Suite is peppered with digital legerdemain, Charleston-evoking panache and couched in virtuoso stylization. It also embraces graceful lyricism and the power of the dance. The inner two movements are a Waltz, both affectionate and haunting, and a Polka with disarmingly throwaway gestures as well as wit and nostalgia. The finale, which bears the title of the album, Rapid Movement, is a supercharged toccata with exuberant orchestral support and set firmly in Hollywood film style. ‘Phew’ is the best response at the end of this captivating and invigorating piece.

Kapustin’s music has been increasingly available but it’s always a pleasure to enjoy his fusion of grace and power. There are inter-connections between the two composers as Kapustin played the piano at a memorial concert for Tsfasman in 1971. Kapustin’s Piano Concerto No.2 was composed the following year, a decade or so after his First Concerto. It’s more laid back than Tsfasman’s Suite, its ethos also necessarily more consistent. Couched in Big Band procedure, the percussion trades in tap rhythms and the band in jazzy skirls. The central Andante has a light Latin feel evoking a piano-and-guitar rhythm and some avid Gershwinesque lines. Like the final movement of Tsfasman’s work, Kapustin saves a Rondo-toccata to garnish his concerto with exciting bravura.

Dmitry Masleev plays both these works with idiomatic drive and plenty of style. He brings these qualities too to the Shostakovich, finding the circus brouhaha in the Allegretto nicely, aided by trumpeter Leonid Gourjev whose cornet-toned playing enhances the slow movement. To complete the chain of associations Shostakovich and Tsfasman were good colleagues.

These spirited readings are rewarding and engaging.

-- Jonathan Woolf, MusicWeb International

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Alexander Tsfasman (born December 14, 1906 - died February 20, 1971) was a Soviet Jazz pianist, composer, conductor, arranger, publisher and activist. He was an important figure in Soviet Jazz from the period of the mid-1920s until the late 1960s. Tsfasman was born in Alexandrovsk (now Zaporizhya, Ukraine) in the Russian empire, and graduated from the Nizhegorod Musical Technicum in 1923, where he played percussion in the orchestra, and graduated from the Moscow Conservatory in 1930 from the piano class of Felix Blumenfeld. From 1939 to 1946, Tsfasman led the jazz band of the All-Union Radio Committee.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Tsfasman

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Dmitri Shostakovich (25 September 1906 – 9 August 1975) was a Russian composer, and a prominent figure of 20th-century music. Shostakovich achieved fame in the Soviet Union, but later had a complex and difficult relationship with the government. Shostakovich's music is characterized by sharp contrasts, elements of the grotesque, and ambivalent tonality; the composer was also heavily influenced by the neo-classical style pioneered by Igor Stravinsky, and by the post-Romanticism associated with Gustav Mahler. Shostakovich's works include 15 symphonies, 15 string quartets, and a substantial quantity of film music.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dmitri_Shostakovich

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Nikolai Kapustin (born November 22, 1937 in Horlivka, Ukrainian SSR) is a Russian composer and pianist. Kapustin studied piano with Avrelian Rubakh (pupil of Felix Blumenfeld who also taught Simon Barere and Vladimir Horowitz) and subsequently with Alexander Goldenweiser at the Moscow Conservatory. Kapustin is steeped in both the traditions of classical virtuoso pianism and improvisational jazz. He fuses these influences in his compositions, using jazz idioms in formal classical structures. Among his works are 20 piano sonatas, 6 piano concerti, sets of piano variations, études and concert studies.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikolai_Kapustin
https://www.nikolai-kapustin.info/

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Dmitry Masleev (born May 4, 1988 in Ulan-Ude, Republic of Buryatia, Russia) is a Russian pianist. He was educated at the Moscow Conservatory in the class of Professor Mikhail Petukhov, and at the Lake Como International Piano Academy in Italy. In 2015 he won First Prize and Gold Medal at the International Tchaikovsky Competition. Masleev has performed in such countries as Russia, Japan, USA, Italy, China, and England, and has collaborated with such conductors as Valery Gergiev and Yevgeny Svetlanov. His first album, which was released in 2017 by Melodia, has made the Spotify Top Classical 2017 charts.

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

http://www.dmitry-masleev.com/en

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