WER 6207-2 © Nikolaj Roslavec In den Stunden des Neumonds Konzert fiir Violine und Orchester Nr. 1WER 6207-2 1) In den Stunden des Neumonds — Casy Novolunija 286 207-2 Sinfonische Dichtung fir Orchester (1910) o..cceco:-veseecseee 12'47 Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Saarbricken Leitung: Heinz Holliger © 1990 B, Schot’s Sshne, Mainz Nikolaj Roslavec (1880-1944) 723 44'26 Konzert fiir Violine und Orchester Nr. 1 zl (2) Allegretto grazioso 15°20 d (3) Adagio sostenuto 17'41 {4} Allegro moderato; risoluto eal aa} Tatjana Grindenko, Violine Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Saarbriicken Leitung: Heinz Holliger © 1990 B. Schott’s Séhne, Mainz Aufnohmen des Soarlindischen Rundfunks vom 18. Juni 1990 (Grofer Sendesaal des Funkhouses Halberg, Soorbriicken) / Aufnchmeleitung: Gideon Rosengarten / Toningenieur: Ginter Braun / Tontechnik: Erich Heigold Cover: Nadeschda Udalzowa: Kubistische Komposition -Am Morgen, 1915 ® 1993 WERGO Schallplatten GmbH, Mainz, Germany © 1993 WERGO Schallplatten GmbH, Mainz, Germany Manufoctured in Germany. Printed in Germany. Eine ausfihrliche Information liegt bei. Detailed information enclosed.he old dispute as to whether biographical information about authors or composers is useful or even essential for an understanding of their works is easily resolved in the case of Nicolai Roslavec. It is almost im- possible to find an important event or decision in his life that was not in- timately connected to the social conditions and political upheavals of his homeland, Roslavec grew up in czarist Russia and played a vital role in the cultural renewal of the early Soviet Union, but he was then to be one of the victims of this revolution which devoured its own children. Thus it is futile to speculate what course his life might have taken had Roslavec managed in time to free himself from the relentless machinery of the re- volution and continue his artistic development in exile, as did composers such as Arthur Lourié, Nicolai Obuchov and Ivan Wyschnegradsky, or the painters Wassily Kandinsky and Marc Chagall Roslavec was born in the Ukrainian town of Duschatin in 1880 (on December 23, 1880 according to the Julian calendar, on January 4, 1881 according to the Gregorian or Western calendar, respectively) - six years after Schdnberg, one year after Bartok and two years before Stravinsky. His early musical instruction was unsystematic but he was accepted as a student at the Moscow Conservatory, from which he grad- vated in 1912, having studied violin with Jan Htimaly and composition with Sergei Vassilenko. The cultural climate in the capital must have been ex- hilarating for the young musician. His generation enthusiastically espoused new artistic currents, following with particular interest the bold proclamations of the Italian Futurists such as Marinetti, Pratella and Russolo. On the occa- sion of the St. Petersburg Futurist symposium in 1914, a Russian group in- cluding the composer Arthur Lourié confidently presented their own ma- nifesto, Our Answer to Marinetti. Roslavec, too, who had already com- posed In the Hours of the New Moon in 1910, was intensely involved in this discussion and exploration of new compositional techniques. It wasbelieved that the use of four, five and six-tone chords in constantly changing transpositions would more spontaneously and effectively make use of the twelve-tone space, free of traditional tonal restraints. Under the influence of Ferruccio Busoni the demand for the inclusion of micro- intervals was also soon heard. Roslavec’s compositional output in these years was prolific. He produced songs, works for piano and chamber music in quick succession Atfirst the political upheavals in the revolutionary year of 1917 seemed to provide new stimulation for Roslavec, who was by this time 37 years old. Lenin had placed the visionary writer and art critic Anatoly Lunacharsky, a friend of the poets Maxim Gorki and Vladimir Maya- kovsky, in charge of education and cultural politics, thus opening the door for astonishing avant-garde experiments. Roslavec directed the con- servatory in the Ukrainian city of Charkow before being summoned to Moscow for a position at the state music publishing house. Starting in 1924 Roslavec edited the innovative periodical Muzykalnaya Kultura, he directed the influential “Political Department” of the publishing house, and as one of the leaders of the Association for Contemporary Music he was a determined champion of the music of Western composers such as Schénberg and Stravinsky. It is interesting to note that a concert cel- ebrating the tenth anniversary of the revolution featured Roslavec’s can- tata October together with Shostakovich’s second Symphony, Dedication to October, which had been commissioned by the Political Department. 1927 also saw the publication of a piano reduction of Roslavec’s Violin Concerto No. I, which he had completed two years earlier The political situation soon grew darker, with inevitable consequences for the cultural life of the country. Lunacharsky left his position in 1929 and died shortly thereafter. The revolutionary poet Mayakoysky’s fears that the old Philistines would return in socialist guise were soon confirmed.Radical Stalinist advocates of “proletarian” music demanded the pro- scription of all “bourgois-formalist” art and attempted to force many prog- ressive artists to change their attitudes as well as the style and content of their works. Roslavec was by no means spared in this witch-hunt, being forced to denounce his earlier artistic convictions. In 1930 the magazine Proletarian Music published an “explanation” which Roslavec had been required to deliver before a committee for the “purification of the Party apparatus”. There followed years of extreme isolation in Tashkent, the remote capital of the Soviet republic of Usbekistan. Brought back to Moscow to train military band leaders, he died in the year 1944. All of his later work remained unpublished. Today the archives are being opened, revealing compositional documents which shed new light on a little-known period of musical history. In the Hours of the New Moon Tone Poem for Orchestra In the years between 1910 and 1920, it was not difficult for a young Russian composer to acquire the reputation of being a “Scriabinist”. This was much like the tendency in Western countries to apply the labels “Debussyist” or “Impressionist” to any work that did not utilize conven- tional triadic or cadential forms, or which did not exhibit easily perceived periodic structures. Roslavec also fought against such simple general- izations, though in the case of his tone poem his arguments were not particularly strong. This work, composed in 1910, does avoid tonal resol- utions for the most part, attempting also to eschew the “march-like” ef- fect of regular metrical structures. And yet the thirty-year-old composer did not yet have a clear enough harmonic and rhythmic vocabulary at his command to completely compensate for the loss of these elements. The kinship to Scriabin is especially clear in the outer sections of thisemotional middle movement which is, however, closely connected to the first movement by the recitative-like solo cadenza. It is true that in the Violin Concerto the earlier high-flying futurist dreams have for the most part been replaced by a more down-to-earth classicism. But this music, too, particularly in the first movement where there are certain similarities to Alban Berg's Lulu (at Nos. 9 and 26 in the score), enters into realms of expression where Roslavec seems to have achieved his old dream: in a moment of the greatest human intellectual tension ... to bring the un- conscious into conscious form. Klaus Schweizer (English translation by W. Richard Rieves)