Polina Osetinskaya ROTA - DESYATNIKOV

This disc of pieces played by the pianist Polina Osetinskaya brings together the music of Giovanni (“Nino”) Rota and Leonid Desyatnikov. An odd combination? – actually, no, Rota (1911-1979) lived entirely in the 20th century; Desyatnikov was born in 1955; but what these composers have in common is not just the century they lived in but the way their work challenges what academic music had become. Neither Rota nor Desyatnikov has ever been part of any musical movement and they have written no theoretical tracts, as was all the rage in the 20th century but we can still see their music as a riposte to contemporary isolationism, arrogance and fear of the listener.

At the conservatoire in Rome the student Rota was groomed to become the next Puccini. At the age of 12 this wunderkind wrote an oratorio which was instantly performed in Rome and Paris but by the middle of the 20th century, with the triumphant avant garde on one side and bloodless traditionalism on the other, there was no place for a second Puccini and Rota’s ten operas (the first written in 1942, the last in 1977) were always overshadowed by his film music. Rota was arguably the most important film composer of the 20th century, Federico Fellini’s friend and in many ways his co-author.

Like Nino Rota, Leonid Desyatnikov has a comprehensive list of works in traditional forms to his credit: symphonies, operas, ballets. In his early days the composer worked in a number of different theatres in Leningrad and beyond. Later he reworked several of these scores as a piano cycle, which is how his concert suite Echoes of the Theatre came about. Here, eccentrically but with a certain artistic inevitability, he brought together music from puppet shows, a vaudeville for Conservatoire students, a cartoon and motifs from the songs of Vertinsky and Efim Rosenfeld.

The waltz In honour of Dickens was created from music written for the Leningrad Youth Theatre play The Cricket on the Hearth. Titry is from the soundtrack to Valery Todorovsky’s film Moscow Nights. Nocturne comes from Alexei Uchitel’s film Giselle Obsession. Happiness is the only solo piano number from Alexandr Zeldovich’s film The Target. Albumblatt was written for the birthday of Yulia Volk-Boreiko, wife of the conductor Andrei Boreiko.

This disc demonstrates that Stravinsky’s famous dictum – “Film music exists only to enrich the composer” – was really just an idle slander. Actually, even Stravinsky’s own greatest compositions exist in genres which before Tchaikovsky, were considered merely decorative. After Tchaikovsky and Stravinsky nobody ever again spoke in a derogatory way about ballet music, for example.

In one way at least Rota and Desyatnikov are both like Stravinsky – their music can stand perfectly well on its own and in Desyatnikov’s case it always surpasses the genre it was born from.

Reiko Fujisawa BACH Goldberg Variations TAKEMITSU Rain Tree Sketch II

Bach’s Goldberg Variations consists of an aria and 30 dazzling variations. The opening aria is a highly ornamented Sarabande. Melodic contour is wonderfully crafted as Bach explores a descending five-note pattern in a typically French style. However, from the first variation it becomes clear that melody is not the theme. Instead Bach produces variations on the bass line and its chord progression. In other words, it is a harmonic universe that Bach explores.

The thirty variations are generally divided into three groups: dance, canon and arabesque. Every third variation in the set is a canon that increases by its intervallic answer, beginning at the unison until Variation 27 which is a canon at the ninth. This final canon is particularly impressive as Bach leaves out the bass line, leaving a ‘pure’ canon between the upper voices. Such a feat is in itself a contrapuntal exercise in genius; more so as these variations are not heavy with cerebral skill, but instead, dance with sparkling lightness.

Tōru Takemitsu composed his Rain Tree Sketch II in 1992, in memory of Olivier Messiaen, the French composer who was a strong influence on Takemitsu. The title of the work was probably inspired by a quotation from a novel by Kenzaburo Oe, Atama no ii, Ame no Ki: “it was named the ‘rain tree’, for its abundant foliage continued to let fall rain drops from the previous night’s shower until the following midday. Its hundreds of thousands of tiny, finger-like leaves store up moisture, whereas other trees dry out at once.” The work is a dreamy meditation on the flow of life, and was Takemitsu’s last piano piece.

Grace Francis CONSOLATION

This album contains the two most greatly significant solo piano sonatas of the mid-nineteenth century, coincidentally composed at the same time by two of the greatest composers of the era - who, in aesthetic development and individual character, could hardly have been more different from one another, although their mutual respect is one of the least appreciated aspects of their later relationship. Grace Francis was born in East London and attended the Yehudi Menuhin School where she studied with Peter Norris and Louis Kentner. At the Royal College of Music, Ms. Francis studied with Irina Zaritskaya and was awarded the Chappell Gold Medal, the highest award for a pianist. She continued her studies with a Wingate Scholarship in the UK, also receiving the Hattori Foundation Award and winning the international competition, Nerada Piano House Award, in Zagreb. In 2014 Grace played in the ‘PIANOWORKS’ gala concert at the Cadogan Hall and 2016 saw the digital release of Sacred. This was also broadcast over several days on BBC Radio 3 in 2015 for International Women’s Day.