String Quartet No. 1 opus 33
Cello Sonata opus 34
Three Pieces for violin and piano opus 26
Piano Concerto No. 4 (for piano, string orchestra and percussion) opus 37
Three Poems on Nekrasov’s Rhymes (1971)
Three Poems on Nekrasov’s Rhymes opus 36 (1990)
Songs from Theatrical Performances: "Ballade" from Quixote, "Bring flowers for the sweethearts" and "A Gypsy Song" from Dorothea, "Like a Nightingale of Rose", "The Night is Slightly Swaying Leaves" and "A Drunk Song" from Much Ado About Nothing

Kapelmeister KAP 012

String Quartet No. 1: Prokofiev String Quartet
Cello Sonata: Kirill Rodin (cello) and Anatoly Sheludiakov (piano)
Three Pieces for violin and piano: Igor Oistrakh (violin) and Natalia Zertsalova (piano)
Piano Concerto No. 4: Arko Chamber Orchestra, Levon Ambartsumian (conductor), Anatoly Sheludiakov (piano)
Three Poems on Nekrasov’s Rhymes: Tchaikovsky Chamber Choir of the Moscow Conservatoire, Boris Tevlin (conductor)
Ballade, Bring flowers and A Gypsy Song: Eugenia Segeniuk (contralto) and Alla Osipenko (piano)
Like a Nightingale, The Night and A Drunk Song: Leonid Boldin (bass) and Ekaterina Ganelina (piano)

The Kapelmeister series of recordings of the music of Khrennikov takes in the film music as well as CDs of the three symphonies and the three piano concertos.

This miscellaneous collection is not quite what the title connotes. Yes there are three chamber music pieces but there are also a baker’s dozen of songs; half of them from Khrennikov’s music theatre works.

The chamber music is surprising. The succinct String Quartet No. 1 is fresh, astonishingly accessible and conservative. It is rather as if Smetana had time-travelled to 20th century Russia. The three movements are deeply romantic, serene and almost Schubertian in their radiance. The music is laid out in lucid transparency and balance. The finale is a sheer delight with some deliciously variegated pizzicato. The Cello Sonata is almost salon-casual, like a mediation between Glazunov and Prokofiev in his most ingratiating and florid style. This is warmly cocooned and romantic stuff. It ends with a cheerful rhythmically well-defined Dance. The sweet-toned Igor Oistrakh then joins Zertsalova for a skittering and militaristically optimistic Dithyramb, a moonstruck Intermezzo with a drop-out at 00.42 and a music-hall absurdist Dance.

The two movement Fourth Piano Concerto is pointedly exuberant and positive. The first movement ends memorably with glassy bell sounds reminiscent of the infernal clockwork at the end of Shostakovich 15. For me it nevertheless remains the least satisfactory of the four concertos although it has some remarkable moments. The six Nekrasov Songs are for mixed a capella choir. The recording is affirmative apart from some very obvious engineering fidgeting with levels in the first song. This is smooth and romantic singing with plenty of bloom and fruit in the beautifully integrated voices. Watching the War Horrors (tr.14) and Hymn (tr. 17) reek of rallies, marches, propaganda and angry exhortation but if we can take such works from Vaughan Williams, Copland and others why not from Khrennikov. The singing throughout the six songs is nothing short of gorgeous if only the engineers could resist the temptation to pull back on the controls. Set it at the correct level and leave it!

The remaining six theatrical songs take us back to solo voice and piano. The first three are melodic, soulful, operatic, dignified and grand – typically Russian. They receive fine performances from Eugenia Segeniuk but Leonid Boldin in his three songs (trs. 21-23) is prone to wobble. Boldin’s allocation is clearly drawn from the long populist tradition of musicals in the USSR. One of these days there will be a revival in this repertoire after people have become tired of picking over the annals of Broadway and London’s theatre-land. The last song is redolent of the more caricatured Yiddish music-theatre songs featured in the Naxos Milken series with broad lolling-eyed humour. In any event the audience loved it.

An often startling cross-section of Khrennikov’s output. The chamber music and the Nekrasov Songs are sure to impress and win him new friends. Time for the West’s choral directors to look in Khrennikov’s direction.

Rob Barnett Musicweb, December 2006

The Quartet sounds inspired by Miaskovsky. A very concise 1988 work, I didn’t find its “Sullen Dance” as sullen as all that. It’s a work out to please rather than to make one think. The Cello sonata is a bigger work and again in three movements. There are strong hints of Prokofiev in the piano writing which often leads the ensemble. The sonata really takes wing, as so often with this composer, when he turns off the grandstanding and unfurls a long cantabile line. The Shostakovich gestures in the finale are apparent though it’s a pity the piano is so over recorded. Rodin is a very fine player and shouldn’t be swamped like this.

The Three Pieces for violin and piano are played by none other than Igor Oistrakh, with Natalia Zertsalova. The first is Prokofiev inspired, the second Szymanowski. The haze is most attractive and eminently well written for both instruments. There’s a blip at 0.42 in the Intermezzo [track 8] so watch out. The Piano Concerto is toccata-ish, not quite neo-classical but conforming to the composer’s liking for baroque procedural moments in his piano concertos. The trademark percussive taps are here and so is a certain, rather unlikely and unusual Iberian haze in Part II – as is Mussorgskian tintinnabulation at the climax.

The songs are less impressive. They’re in the main very conventional; some in fact wouldn’t have gone amiss in the late nineteenth century. Bring flowers could have been written any time then. The singers are pungent if unsubtle. No texts are provided which means we need to respond to their powers – considerable – of histrionic projection. There’s a drunk song from Much Ado About Nothing that’s the quintessence of tedium. Odd that his vocal works are so uninteresting.

The booklet notes need an awful lot of work for English speakers though one can get the gist of things easily enough. Less forgivable is the reprinting of an article by that otherwise tireless Russian executant, author and musicologist Lev Ginsburg. Its disgusting sycophancy has no place here, not least given Khrennikov’s political reputation. As for his music it leaves a very mixed impression. It has flair, energy, colour and moments of reflection. But it relies on gesture, on motoric rhythms, and is strongly influenced by contemporaries to an extent that it can become eclipsed. Themes are attractive but not always memorable. The use of baroque procedure is never of the concerto grosso kind; it’s subtle and full of suggestibility. At his best he can be a most engaging composer; at his worst he runs on autopilot.

Jonathan Woolf
Musicweb, December 2006