Chamber Music

VARIOUS

Of all the major Russian composers, Reinhold Gliere is one of the least well-known in the West. His life spanned a vast period from the Czar’s reign to Soviet dictatorship, and he made it through the Stalin era relatively intact by mostly avoiding conflict without losing face. Such dilemmas were to haunt the lives of Gliere’s pupil Prokofiev, and especially that of his colleague Shostakovich, 30 years younger, but they were not yet current in 1900, when 20 year old Gliere, still a student, injected all of his youthful verve into composing his String Octet in D Major Op. 5. The work soon gained immense popularity in Russia. Shostakovich’s Two Pieces for String Octet, Op. 11 let us look back upon the beginning of an outstanding musical carer that was overshadowed by harsh difficulties. These two pieces with the headings Prelude and Scherzo are from the period when Shostakovich was still a student. Reynaldo Hahn was a student of Maurice Ravel at Paris Conservatoire. He studied composition with several professors including Jules Massenet. He gained considerable renown with his song cycles, operettas, and ballets. His Piano Quintet in F Sharp Minor is a rhapsodic work in the lineage of French Late Romanticism.

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