Another Of Stalin's Victims

Nikolay Roslavets was another of those composers trying to pursue a career under the impossible strictures of Stalinist Russia. He was not as successful as more established names in doing this but the music on this disk indicates that we are the poorer for that. It is a disk by the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra conducted by Ilan Volkov and the main piece featured is the Chamber Symphony. Only published in 2005, this is the first recording. It is almost an hour long and perhaps shares a soundworld with Schoenberg but there are echoes of others, the use of recurring leitmotifs that could be found in Shostakovich and Myaskovsky. There is a long and extremely atmospheric slow movement and the scherzo is in a wild dance form with folk tinges that may have been picked up in exile in Uzbekistan. The ecstatic feel of much of the finale shows Roslavets admiration for Scriabin and this is also apparent in the filler, a piece entitled In The Hours Of The New Moon. Contemporaneous with Stravinsky's Firebird, it also shows the orchestral palete of Rimsky-Korsakov and spotlights the playing of the BBCSSO's leader Elizabeth Layton.