OK
Technical Notice
| Classical Composer: | Khachaturian, Aram Il'yich |
|---|---|
| Work: | Lermontov Suite |
| Year Composed: | 1959 |
| Instrumentation: | 2+picc 2+ca 2+bcl 2 - 4 3 3 1, timp, perc, hp, str |
| Publishers: |
Boosey & Hawkes Sikorski Music Moscow |
| Duration: | 00:22:00 |
| Period: | 20th Century |
| Work Category: | Orchestral |
Work Information
Available Recording(s)
Written for Boris Lavrenyov’s play in 1954, Lermontov recounts the life and work of the playwright and poet Mikhail Lermontov (1814–1841), latterly considered the greatest Russian author of his era after Pushkin and one who similarly died as the result of a duel. For his incidental music Khachaturian devised some new material as well as drawing on the score he composed thirteen years earlier for a production of Lermontov’s play Masquerade, whose Waltz has long been among his best known pieces. In 1959 he returned to the Lermontov score to create a suite.
The first movement is set in motion with a powerfully rhetorical theme that briefly takes on a calmer and more evocative manner before coming to an abrupt halt on pizzicato strings and untuned percussion. The second movement is one of the composer’s highly distinctive brand of waltzes, here with woodwind and lower strings to the fore, and which also takes in a contrasting and more lightly scored episode (albeit still underpinned by the waltz rhythm) before the return of the main theme brings about a bitter-sweet conclusion. The third movement opens vividly, though making way for a plaintive theme on oboe that is heard across the whole orchestra and builds in impetus as it does so. This is repeated, but now a more animated idea featuring woodwind and percussion is interposed, prior to the hesitant return of the initial theme on clarinet then other woodwind, all the while gaining in ardency before the surprisingly brusque close.
Writer: Richard Whitehouse
| No. | Catalogue No. | Album Title | Label | Featured Artist |
|---|
