ANDREI ESHPAI EDITION VOL.1 (CD)

Andrei Eshpai, composerSymphonic Dances on Mari ThemesAll-Union Radio & Television Symphony Orchestra, Leonid Nikolaev, conductorAndrei Eshpai, composerConcerto No. 4 for Violin & OrchestraSymphony Orchestra of St. Petersburg Cappella, Jennifer Koh, violinAndrei Eshpai, composerSymphony No. 2 "Praise to Light"USSR Large Symphony Orchestra, Konstanin Ivanov, conductorREVIEW:"Until recently, all most of us knew of 20th-Century Soviet music was Shostakovich, Khachaturian, Prokofieff, and Kabalevsky. Everything else was supposedly dreary-folksy "Socialist Realism," about the most a Russian composer could hope to attain when the most recent developments in music were officially condemned. Surely there were some other Soviet composers who wrote music worth hearing? Here`s one. Andrei Eshpai (b. 1925) is an important figure in his homeland, and his music is not exactly unknown outside of it...The three works are all appreciably different from each other. The 1952 Symphonic Dances might have been written in 1922 - or 1892. It`s a conservative but colorful score in the good old Russian style...I was most pleasantly surprised by the 1962 Symphony, whose subtitle and provenance suggested something in the noodly-ecstatic mode of Hovhaness. This is an uneven work, but the first and last movements are exciting, and the utterly simple II, an Andante dolente lullaby of single lines of melody against a harp accompaniment, is magical." (American Record Guide)