Various - LOKSHIN:SYMPHONY NO. 5

Melodiya presents a new album of Alexander Lokshin�s chamber music. Alexander Lazarevich Lokshin (1920-1987) was one of the most original representatives of the Russian school of the 20th century and unfortunately underrated in his lifetime. A pupil of Nikolai Myaskovsky and a friend of Dmitri Shostakovich, whom admired his music, Lokshin was a creator of his individual style with an organic blend of symphonic, chamber and vocal genres. His two-movement Symphony No. 5 (1969) is the composer�s characteristic type of �symphony with voice� written for baritone and chamber orchestra and based on Shakespeare�s Sonnets 66 and 73 (translated into Russian by Boris Pasternak). The quintet for clarinet and strings (1955) also has two parts: a slow one, where, according to the composer, �Shostakovich and Vertinsky were combined in a very paradoxical way,� is followed by variations inspired by Stravinsky�s style. The two large cycles are supplemented with an earlier piece, Variations for Piano (1953), written �in the vein of Shostakovich� and dedicated to Maria Grinberg, an outstanding Soviet pianist and successor of Felix Blumenfeld�s school. Alexander Lokshin�s works are performed by some of the most prominent Russian musicians of the previous century: Symphony No. 5 is performed by Rudolf Barshai, a friend and admirer of the composer, and creator of the first Soviet chamber orchestra, and Yan Kratov, a soloist of the Moscow Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko Academic Music Theatre; the quintet features Ivan Mozgovenko, a clarinettist and People�s Artist of Russia, and the Komitas Quartet, one of the oldest chamber ensembles of this country; and the piano variations are performed by Maria Grinberg.