THE YEAR 1917
Music In Turbulent Times
Deutsche Grammophon
479 6969 (2 CDs) /
****
Exactly
one hundred years ago, Europe was mired in the bloodiest war civilisation had
ever known, and within months, Tsar Nicholas II of Russia was overthrown in the
Bolshevik Revolution, ushering in the most brutal political regime of modern
times.
Music was still being composed, distinguished by iconoclasm and
modernity, but indelibly influenced by global events of the time. This
double-disc set surveys works written in the momentous year 1917, encompassing
late Romanticism, neoclassicism and the rise of avant-gardism. Composers like
Respighi (Fountains of Rome), Holst (The Planets), Bartok (The Wooden Prince), Stravinsky (Les Noces) and Prokofiev (Violin Concerto No.1) all figure in this musical
montage through excerpts from major repertoire works.
There
is a complete performance of Erik Satie's dadaist ballet Parade
(performed by the Monte Carlo Opera Orchestra led by Louis Frémaux), which
employs non-musical sounds of the typewriter and sirens. Ravel's piano suite La
Tombeau de Couperin (comprising 6 movements dedicated to friends who died
in the Great War) performed by Monique Haas, and Debussy's last piano piece, a
little prelude entitled Les soirs illumines par l'ardeur du charbon (Evenings
Lit By Burning Coals) with Philippe Cassard.
The centrepiece is
Shostakovich's Twelfth Symphony “The Year 1917”, a 1961
programmatic pot-boiler commemorating the October Revolution and dedicated to
the memory of Lenin. Neeme Järvi conducting the Gothenburg Symphony gives a
straight forward account without any hint of irony. Recommended for history
buffs.
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