Category: Recording

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Vladimir Tsybin, ALLEGRO CONCERTANTE No.1

Horacio Parravicini, flute
Eduardo Cazaban, piano

from the CD “Easterly Winds”

 

Tsybin studied flute and composition at the Moscow Conservatory under, amongst others, Glazunov and Liadov. He was solo flute at both Bolshoi and Mariinsky Theaters and taught at the St.Petersburg and Moscow Conservatories. He was often referred to as the “Russian Andersen”, on a par with Denmark’s Joachim Andersen, who was to become solo flute of the Berlin Philharmonic and was also a prolific composer for the instrument.

The ALLEGRO CONCERTANTE No.1 in A minor, similarly to Nos.2 and 3, was composed in 1946. Tsybin was, at this time, already retired from concert activity but continued teaching at the Moscow Conservatory.
These works were composed with teaching in mind, in the same manner as those works composed by Andersen and Boehm. They have remained as mandatory repertoire in the Leningrad and Moscow Conservatories for over 50 years. However, outside Russia, they are almost unknown.

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Anton Rubinstein, Night-time (Romanza) Op.44 No.1

Horacio Parravicini​​, flute
Eduardo Cazaban, piano

From CD “Easterly Winds”

 

Rubinstein studied in Paris and Berlin. In 1862 he founded the St.Petersburg Conservatory, Russia’s first school of music, thus paving the way for Russia as a musical power. He was a great virtuoso pianist and his popularity was said only to have been equaled by that of Franz Liszt.
His compositional style was devoid of any nationalist aesthetic traits, but these proved to be only of an inspirational nature for his music and thematic material for his operas. He regarded himself as within the most conservative of European traditions. This may explain why his works, although played by artists of the stature of Liszt, Mahler, Saint-Saëns and Brahms, after his death and during the communist regime, were almost forgotten.
The work’s original title was Soirées de Saint-Pétersbourg, and composed in 1860, is made up of six pieces for piano solo. One of them, the Romanza, was later arranged for voice and piano on a poem by Pushkin and was given the name Noc (Night-time). The transcription for flute is by Joanna Krakowska and is amongst a series of works published by a Polish editor under the title “Miniatures for flute”.

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Ernő Dohnányi (1877-1960), Passacaglia for solo flute

From CD “Easterly Winds” (2007)
Recorded at Estudios Moebio, Buenos Aires, in July 2007

 

Although Ernő Dohnányi’s music was essentially Romantic in nature, the Passacaglia for Solo Flute employs the 12 tone series, in an attempt to juggle with a new language. The renowned flutist, Eleanor Baker, reminiscing on her youth, recalls having heard Dohnányi play a Brahms Sonata marvelously and there and then, expressing her sorrow at Brahms not having composed a similar work for the flute. Dohnányi had promptly replied, “then I will compose one for you, in his stead”. It was thus that Op.48 No.1 (Aria for Flute and Piano) and Op.48 No.2 (Passacaglia for Solo Flute) came to be, both having Ms.Baker as the dedicatee. And it was she who premiered both works at Carnegie Hall in New York in 1969.

*artwork by Martin Johnson Heade (American, 1819-1904), Passion Flowers and Hummingbirds, a fragment, from the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, USA