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Lokshin – Les fleurs du mal

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Catalogue numberBIS-1556 CD
Release date2010-01-28
Discs1
Orig. sample rate44100Hz
Total time81:21

This third disc on BIS of the orchestral music of Alexander Lokshin opens with Les fleurs du mal, his first acknowledged composition. The piece was also his graduation work after five years of study under the great Nikolai Myaskovsky at the Moscow Conservatory. By choosing to set three poems by Charles Baudelaire, condemned as 'decadent' and 'bourgeois' during the Stalin era, Lokshin fell foul of the political regime at the very outset of his career. Hungarian Fantasy was composed 13 years later, and is one of Lokshin's few instrumental works of a virtuosic and soloistic nature. Purely instrumental is also the symphonic suite In the Jungle from 1960, compiled from music written for a film based on The Jungle Book by Kipling. The two remaining works on the disc belong to the final period in Lokshin's oeuvre - in fact Sinfonietta No.2 was the very last work he completed. At this time, Lokshin had come to favour smaller ensembles, often including a vocal line. The concision of his final works prompted the following words by Lokshin's champion Rudolf Barshai: 'He was capable of conjuring up a colourful painting, a scene, sometimes an entire drama within the space of a short phrase or even in a single bar.' For Sinfonietta No.2 Lokshin chose three poems by Fyodor Sologub (1863-1927), a poet whose texts often display a typical fin-de-siècle existential despair and death-obsessed frenzy. The Art of Poetry, considered by the composer to be one of his best works, also has a Russian text, a poem by Nikolai Zabolotsky (1903-58). Conductor Michel Swierczewski has been the mastermind behind the entire Lokshin project on BIS, and the soprano Vanda Tabery has also appeared on the two previous, critically acclaimed discs. 'Outstandingly vibrant performances' is how the reviewer in BBC Music Magazine described the first disc to be released, while the second caused the critic in the Spanish magazine Scherzo to characterize Lokshin as 'a sophisticated composer, subtle, without flaws and highly evocative.'
 
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$ 16.66
 
Extra material for download
 
 
  Composer: Lokshin, Alexander
  Les fleurs du mal, Vocal-symphonic poem for soprano and symphony orchestra 17:15
01 I. À une passante 06:49 $ 1.43 USD
02 II. Parfum exotique 03:23 $ 0.71 USD
03 III. Tristesse de la lune 07:03 $ 1.48 USD
 
04 Hungarian Fantasy for violin and orchestra 17:52 $ 3.75 USD
 
05 The Art of Poetry for soprano and chamber orchestra 06:21 $ 1.33 USD
 
06 Sinfonietta No.2 for soprano and chamber orchestra 15:20 $ 3.22 USD
 
  In the Jungle, Symphonic Suite 22:33
07 I. Introduction 01:44 $ 0.36 USD
08 II. The Jungle 03:03 $ 0.64 USD
09 III. Games of the Monkeys 05:23 $ 1.13 USD
10 IV. The Night 03:42 $ 0.78 USD
11 V. The Birds 01:56 $ 0.41 USD
12 VI. The Drive Hunt 02:28 $ 0.52 USD
13 VII. The Round-up – Finale 04:17 $ 0.90 USD
 
  Album total 81:21
ComposerLokshin, Alexander
SopranoTabery, Vanda
OrchestraGrosses Orchester Graz
ConductorSwierczewski, Michel
ViolinRedik, Wolfgang

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