This is the second volume of Thomas Sanderling’s promised
complete set of the orchestral music of Taneyev. It includes
three mature works that are well-known. We also get to hear four
earlier works that the composer never allowed to be published,
and which, like a number of others, were only released to the
world in the 1950s. This is a shame because all four demonstrate
that Taneyev was already a notable composer very early in his
career.
Two of the works date from the composer’s student years.
The overture in D-minor was his graduation piece and won an award.
It is rather somber, with a Tchaikovskian lyricism combined with
an underlying sense of unease. The central section features the
woodwinds and is beautifully developed. At this point (19 years
old) he still has trouble getting everything he wants from his
basic material, but that would come later. However the devopment
of this material into a cheerful finale is quite skillful. Also
from 1875 is the Adagio in C-major. This is a lyrical work of
great songfulness, with intimations of future vocal pieces. Tchaikovsky
and Mozart hang over it to a degree, but its sheer beauty is
the composer’s own. Why he would not want to publish it
is a mystery.
Five years later Taneyev’s status as a mature composer
was already assured enough for him to be asked to write the Cantata
on Pushkin’s “
Exegi Monumemtum”. This
is a setting of the first two verses of the poem of that name
and was written for the unveiling of the Pushkin Monument in
Moscow. It is quite simple, but evocative of the poet’s
themes of the impermanence of political life when contrasted
with the permanence of art. It has some beautiful polyphony and
orchestration. Two years later Taneyev wrote a much large work
that is one of his very few with a folk basis. The
Overture
on a Russian Theme takes the composer’s usual compositional
method of developing segments of one theme and applies it to
a theme from a folk collection compiled by Rimsky-Korsakov. The
entire theme itself is hardly heard at all, but parts of it constantly
succeed each other in a variety of different moods, ranging from
the dramatic to the lyrical. The woodwinds are skillfully used
throughout - a frequent feature of the composer’s works.
While the slower middle section gets a little too involved, it
is succeeded by an excellent sequential passage on strings that
leads to the finale - a glorification of the original theme.
This work compares well with similar pieces by the composer’s
contemporaries and should be better known.
The
Canzona and the
Oresteia works
were published
by Taneyev and have been popular in Russia ever since. The
Canzona is
one of the composer’s few concerted works and is both virtuosic
and tender with a middle section reminiscent of the clarinet
works of Weber. The wistful end could only be Taneyev. There
is a competing recording of the piece on Naxos with Vytautas
Sondeckis, but I found Jankovsky’s version preferable for
its liveliness. Taneyev arranged the piece for cello and piano
and it has been recorded in this form several times, including
by Rostropovich
(see
review).
Soon after beginning
The Oresteia, his only opera, the
composer started turning the material into a symphonic poem,
which he published as a separate work, and then went on to compose
the full opera, premiered five years or so after the symphonic
poem. The poem is based on five themes representing various aspects
of the Aeschylus play and the exposition of the themes is extremely
dramatic. The composer later occasionally gets carried away by
the violence of the music for the Furies, but those sections
representing the feelings of Orestes are always well done. This
leads to the highlight of the piece - the judgment that Orestes
is innocent of matricide by Athena and the Areopagus and the
final apotheosis of Athenian justice. The major competition for
Sanderling in this piece is provided by Vladimir Ashkenazy and
Neeme Järvi. I found Sanderling more gripping than Ashkenazy
(see
review) and with a better sense of the overall work. With
Järvi there is slightly more excitement and a slightly better
recording, but Sanderling has the cost advantage.
The Act 3 Entr’acte from the opera proper concerns Orestes’ journey
to Apollo’s temple at Delphi to find out how to rid himself
of the Furies. The main musical element here is Apollo’s
shimmering theme as he banishes the Furies from his temple and
sends Orestes to Athens for his eventual pardon. This section
shows a tighter development than the appearance of the same material
in the symphonic poem. It was also recorded by Ashkenazy and
more excitingly by Svetlanov
(see
review).
In comparing this disc with the first volume of the series, Symphonies
1 and 3, recorded a year before this one, several developments
are obvious
(see
review). The first is that Thomas Sanderling has a much better
control over the orchestra and that the ragged playing that afflicted
sections of the earlier disk is gone. His ability to alternate
between dramatic and lyrical is really first rate. The second
is that the orchestra seems to have accommodated itself to the
music to a greater degree. The brass and percussion are exemplary
in the
Oresteia poem and the woodwinds are a highlight
in almost every piece. Finally, the engineers seem to have mastered
the Studio of West-Siberian Radio and acoustics are no longer
a problem. All of this makes for a superior disc. There are also
exemplary notes by Anastasia Belina. One can have no hesitation
in recommending this disc not only to Taneyev lovers, but as
an example of the range of creativity of a composer still far
from receiving his due in the general history of music.
William Kreindler
see also review by Dan
Morgan
Stanislav Jankovsky (clarinet) 
