Khachaturian: Concerto-Rhapsody for Cello in D minor

This disc offers a rare opportunity to sample music by Armenian composers, here represented by three works for cello and orchestra.

Naturally Khachaturian is among the selected composers, with his impassioned and expansive Concerto-Rhapsody from 1963 as the disc's opening work. This is followed by Suren Zakarian’s Monograph for cello and chamber orchestra,

A Suite for cello and chamber orchestra by Zakarian's younger colleague, Vache Sharafyan follows. The composer's aim has been 'to create a sense of the perpetual cycle of life and history'. Sharafyan has also arranged the disc's epilogue, an atmospheric arrangement of the song Krunk (Crane). In this version for trio the melody is “sung” by the cello and accompanied by a piano and a duduk, an Armenian double-reed woodwind instrument is often heard in film scores

The UK-based Alexander Chaushian, cello soloist in all of these works, is Armenian by birth, and is supported by the Armenian Philharmonic Orchestra under their principal conductor Eduard Topchjan.

The Naxos series devoted to the orchestral music of Aram Khachaturian (1903-1978) continues with two pieces that both feature the cello.

The Cello Concerto (1946) is the most resourceful and forward-looking of his works from this period, qualities which did not endear it to the authorities at a difficult time for Soviet musicians, while the Concert-Rhapsody (1963) pursues a personal approach to the combining of soloist and orchestra that is highly convincing on its own terms.

His Violin Concerto and Concert-Rhapsody for Violin are available on 8570988

Khachaturian’s Concerto-Rhapsody for Cello was dedicated to and premiered by Rostropovich in 1964. His First Symphony is dedicated to the 15th anniversary of Soviet Armenia. This recording features the composer conducting his own works.

One of the interesting facts surrounding the incredible number of great Russian musicians born in the Soviet area, is that the overwhelming majority of them came not from proletarian backgrounds, but from established musical families. Mstislav Rostropovich was no exception. Born in 1927 in the oil-rich town of Baku on the Caspian Sea, his mother was a pianist, and his father a cellist who had studied with Pablo Casals. Mstislav went to the Moscow Conservatory where he had composition studies with Shostakovich – this would see the start of a long and fruitful friendship with the composer.

He won the Stalin Prize twice in the 1950s – a dubious honour for a man who became one of the regime’s most outspoken artistic dissidents. Even so he was allowed to continue his travels in the West, settling in the UK, and finally being deprived of his Soviet citizenship in 1978. He returned to Russia in 1990 when Boris Yeltsin’s reforms lead the way to a more open society and political system. Although his repertoire was wide-ranging, from Bach through the Romantic masters to 20th-century giants such as Britten and Shostakovich, it was his fellow countryman’s music that he was especially committed to, especially young composers such as Vlasov and Tishchenko.