Tcherepnin: Symphonic March, Op. 80

Concerto No. 1 was composed in a late-Romantic vein: ‘a typical Sturm und Drang piece’, as Tcherepnin himself would later describe it. By the time of the third concerto, he had entered a modernist stage and the work was written during wide-ranging travels that brought the composer from Boston to Jerusalem and Cairo – its first theme was inspired by a song he heard from Egyptian boatmen on the Nile. Also included are two orchestral works: Festmusik, a suite from the opera The Wedding of Sobeide with libretto by Richard Strauss’ collaborator Hugo von Hofmannsthal, and Symphonic March, composed in 1951, as Tcherepnin was establishing himself as a symphonic composer in the USA.

This boxed set includes the first complete recorded cycle of Alexander Tcherepnin’s symphonies and piano concertos, along with four shorter orchestral scores. The striking stylistic diversity within this body of work illustrates the complex evolution of Tcherepnin’s style during a half-century-long odyssey both artistic and geographic.

The recordings included in this set were originally released on single CDs, and have all received lavish praise, both for the fascinating repertoire and for the highly sympathetic performances by Singapore Symphony Orchestra under Lan Shui and for Noriko Ogawa’s interpretations. Fanfare: ‘In everything Noriko Ogawa tackles, she comes up shining: Her playing customarily blends brilliance and power in equal measure, and here again she's just as good as she has now led us to expect.’

Tcherepnin’s development can be charted throughout these four discs, from the First Piano Concerto, composed in 1919, to the works of the 1960s. In the words of Benjamin Folkman, Tcherepnin’s biographer and the compiler of the liner notes for this title, ‘what one hears is the music of a composer who is not so much reinventing himself as seeking an artistic orientation that gains in coherence by growing ever more comprehensive: a composer secure in his faith that, while the musical impulse is a universal human phenomenon, each musical work is a world unto itself.’