Roslavets: Preludes (5) for piano

This release continues Melodiya’s 30 CD series and includes works by Lev Revutsky, Vsevolod Zaderatsky, Nikolai Roslavets, Samuil Feinberg, Sergei Protopopov and Vladimir Deshevov. Some of the works are first recordings.

A winner of many awards, the Russian pianist Anna Alexeyev has performed around the world with some of the most prestigious orchestras. In 1995 she premiered Paul McCartney’s first solo piano piece entitled “A Leaf”, which was later released on CD. This new recording features a unique combination of the piano music of Alexander Scriabin and Nikolai Roslavets.

The pairing of these two composers may appear to be a novel idea, but it is long overdue and illustrates a connection between their compositions that has been overlooked. Scriabin and Roslavets were contemporaries, but their lives could not have been more different.

Scriabin was born into an aristocratic Moscow family, had access from a young age to the best formal music training available, and enjoyed recognition as a brilliant concert pianist and innovative composer during his lifetime. Roslavets came from a rural background outside of Russia proper, taught himself to play the violin and then obtained enough formal training to enter the Moscow Conservatory at the age of 21. Although as a composer he soon fell into political disfavour and his music was rarely performed during his lifetime, since the collapse of the Soviet Union his work has begun to gain recognition.

Anya Alexeyev studied at the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory and at the Royal College of Music in London. Her UK concerto appearances include the BBC Philharmonic, RPO, Philharmonia, RSNO, CBSO, BSO ECO, LMP and BBC National Orchestra of Wales.

This is one of the first four new releases on the Canadian label Marquis since Proper Note took over its distribution this month.

Roslavets (1881 – 1944), a philosopher and composer, experimented with new tonal systems and as such was banned in Russia. For decades after his death he remained an “ unperson” for the Soviet authorities but was recommended to the “west” by Igor Stravinsky.

Beautiful, bold, striking piano music – as new a sound as any music hidden, forgotten, or forbidden; as traditional a blast as a stiff shot of vodka. But it is also a reminder that the red flag, once a symbol of insurrection and disobedience, has not all-of-a-sudden turned white. — John Corbett

"In the period between the end of the tsarist regime and the seizure of power by the Bolsheviks, the country underwent transformations, as tragic as they were profound, which were later to change the face of the world. For a quarter of a century, the arts became an extraordinarily fruitful field of experiment. Whether conservative or modern, the different aesthetic approaches would overlap, coincide, or confront each other. With its almost sketch-like brevity, its expressive immediacy and its intimate character, the prelude mirrored its age by becoming the ideal vehicle of confession for composers plagued by doubt. The programme on this CD illustrates the development of this elliptical form in the period between 1905 and 1922, two crucial dates in Russian history".