John Park, commenting on the Arte Nova "Russian Futurism" wonders about the
composers Alexander Mosolov, Nikolai Roslavets, and Lev Knipper, then ask
about other pre-terror Russian/Soviet composers worth exploring.

Knipper (1898-1974) was a student of Gliere and the
experimentalist/decadent composer Zhilaev (a victim of the terror).  Like
Miaskovsky, he had a military background, and spent most of the terror in
the Far Eastern division of the Red Army as a musical director.  His music
in the 20s gravitated toward Hindemith, but after the 1930 took on the
programmatic cast of social realist agitprop. [Listen to "Poem about the
Fighting Komsomol" Olympia OCD 202.] In the 1950s, his style reverted
somewhat to its earlier, Germanic orientation.  [Listen to "Symphony for
Strings" (1953) Olympia OCD 163].

Nikolai Roslavets (1880-1944) since his scholarly rehabilitation by D.
Godjowy in the 1980s has been embraced by European intellectual circles
as the great repressed musical thinker of the Russian/Soviet tradition.
He was a student at the Moscow Conservatory studying composition with
the 2nd-rater, Sergei Vassilenko (perhaps because he like Roslavets's
was Ukrainian).  He and composer Artur Lourie responded to Marinetti's
"Futurist Manifesto" with their own theoretical pronouncement.  Influenced
by Busoni's theoretical writings, Roslavets devised a synthetic scheme of
musical organization that he believed would serve as the basis of a new
and rigorous musical academicism.  He was revolutionary in politics and
consequently occupied many posts under the Soviets, including editor of
Muzykalnaya Kultura.  He was a founder of the cosmopolitan musical
association, ACM.  When the Stalinist moment came, Roslavets was one who
suffered, being rusticated to Uzbekistan.  Much of his work was unpublished
and unfinished, and one of the great projects of the new ACM is the
finishing of NR's works.  Some of these renovated items, the 2nd viola
sonata finished by the talented A.  Raskatov, are quite superb.  Of the
pieces published during the author's lifetime, the 1925 violin concerto
stands out [Wergo WER 6207-02].  M-A Hamelin's recent survey of piano
music is astonishing.  But I am bothered by the fact that of all the 1920s
composers of piano works, Roslavets is the only major figure who didn't
give rise to a performance tradition.  People having been playing works
by Mosolov, Polovinkin, Aleksandrov, and Feinberg since the 1920s; not so
Roslavets.

Alexander Mosolov (1900-1973) was another repressed experimentalist, whose
rehabilitation began shortly after his death, prompted by Y.  Svetlanov.
Famous for his constructivist tone poem Zavod (Iron Foundry) Opus 19 that
enjoyed an international vogue as machine music in the 1920s, Mosolov was
the most charismatic of the 1920s musical experimentalists.  Theatrical,
handsome, and musically audacious, he created sensation after sensation.
When Prokofiev surveyed the younger talents, Mosolov was singled out as
the one to watch.  His compositions, however, are inconsistent in the
quality.  There are some wonderful piano pieces - the 2 nocturnes convey a
wonderfully icy vision of Soviet Night in the Age of Steel - yet the bigger
works are baggy.  The opus 14 Piano Concerto [Melodiya MCD 176] descends at
times to grim banging.  Post 1931, he altered his style, and began churning
out patriotic pot-boilers based on folk songs and choral hymns to
collectivization.

Other Soviet composers of the 1920s worth exploring: Miaskovsky - Gavril
Popov - whose symphonies have been coming out on Olympia (I wish someone
would record his "Great Suite for Piano") - Aleksandr Krein (Jonathan
Powell's performance of the titanic piano sonata, also the first symphony,
on Largo Records is worth seeking out).  But the 3 important composers
whose works haven't been explored or cd are Anatolii Aleksandrov (his
Alexandrine songs after Kuzmin were the last masterwork of the Silver Age,
and his piano preludes, sonatas, and suits of the 1920s some of the finest
crafted of Soviet Works - a Russian Faure w/ an adventurous taste in
harmony), Samuel Feinberg (whose transcriptions are now being played by
many virtuoso pianists, but whose original works, particularly the first
6 sonatas, are among the wildest of post-Scriabin piano inventions), and
Vladimir Shcherbachev, whose symphonies and compositions based on the poems
of A.  Blok deserve a hearing.

David Shields
Charleston, SC