Alexey Shor - Images from the Great Siege; Verdiana (Sergey Smbatyan)

Information

Composer: Alexey Shor

1. Images from the Great Siege: I. Premonition
2. Images from the Great Siege: II. Call to Arms
3. Images from the Great Siege: III. Leaving Home
4. Images from the Great Siege: IV. Solitary Rider
5. Images from the Great Siege: V. Grand Master's Ball
6. Images from the Great Siege: VI. Young Knight's Dream
7. Images from the Great Siege: VII. Mirage
8. Images from the Great Siege: VIII. Cannonade
9. Images from the Great Siege: IX. St. Elmo Barcarolle
10. Images from the Great Siege: X. A Loss
11. Images from the Great Siege: XI. Wartime Lullaby
12. Images from the Great Siege: XII. The Big Bluff
13. Images from the Great Siege: XIII. Victory Celebration
14. Verdiana (version for orchestra)

London Symphony Orchestra

Sergey Smbatyan, conductor

Date: 2020

Label: Naxos

https://www.naxos.com/CatalogueDetail/?id=8.579061

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Review

Alexey Shor is a composer previously entirely unknown to me, and a man with an interesting history. Born in Kiev, he studied Mechanics and Mathematics until his family emigrated to Israel in 1991. He moved to the United States, where he was awarded a Ph.D in Mathematics, and, until 2016, he continued to work in mathematics. In 2012, he began to compose, first short pieces, and a friend persuaded him to work on a You Tube video, which attracted over 350,000 viewers. Since then he has been widely performed, and is now Composer-in-Residence for the Malta Philharmonic Orchestra Academy, Armenian State Symphony Orchestra and the Salomé Chamber Orchestra.

Miniatures and short pieces have been recorded in half a dozen collections, but the new recording is the first devoted entirely to Shor’s music. His popularity is easy to understand. His idiom is highly melodic, lively, varied, deftly orchestrated – and could have been written at almost any time in the last century. His gift seems to be for the miniature, and he invests his pieces with great variety.

Images from the Great Siege was inspired by the Great Siege of Malta, by the Turks, in 1565, a siege which lasted 28 days before the attackers were defeated. Of his music, Shor writes:

This cycle does not attempt to do justice to the horrors and heroism of the Great Siege of Malta but rather to present a few romanticised images related to it.

That description is accurate. The music is thoroughly romantic in character, and while Shor provides, in his programme notes, a narrative account of each movement, I found myself swiftly ignoring it, and just enjoying the sound. The 13 movements are each brief – the two longest are under five minutes each – never outstay their welcome, and are enjoyable on their own, conservative, terms.

Verdiana is best described as an amiable bon-bon, with famous melodies from the operas recast in the style of tango, bossa nova, and samba, neatly and enjoyably done.

Performances have both commitment and enjoyment all over them. By modern standards, playing time is on the brief side, and it might have been an idea to include something else, such as some pieces from Shor’s ballet, Crystal Palace, but perhaps Naxos have in mind a complete performance of this two-act work, which has operatic elements.

-- Michael Wilkinson, MusicWeb International

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Alexey Shor is a classical composer who was born in Ukraine in 1970, immigrated to Israel in 1991, and now lives primarily in the USA. His compositions have been performed at some of the most prestigious concert halls, and concerts with his music have been broadcast on MediciTV, Mezzo and Euronews. CDs with his compositions have been issued by Warner Classics, DECCA, SONY Classics, Naxos, Delos, Berlin Classics and Melodiya. Shor is the Composer-In-Residence for the Armenian State Symphony Orchestra, and has been appointed as Yehudi Menuhin School’s first associate composer in 2022.

https://alexeyshor.com/

***

Sergey Smbatyan (born 1987 in Yerevan) is an Armenian conductor and violinist. He is the Founding Artistic Director and Principal Conductor of the Armenian State Symphony Orchestra and Principal Conductor of the Malta Philharmonic Orchestra. As a conductor, Smbatyan has been significantly influenced by his lessons with Riccardo Muti and Sir Colin Davis which he undertook during his studies at the Royal Academy of Music in London. Smbatyan’s championing and commissioning living composers, promoting cultural heritage and developing new audiences are central to his artistic life.

https://sergeysmbatyan.com/

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

FLAC, tracks

Links in comment

Enjoy!