International Record Review, July 2000
Mikhail Nosyrev’s music has considerable difficulties living up to his life story. As a l9-year-old violinist in Leningrad’s Musical Comedy Theatre he was denounced, arrested, accused of counter-revolutionary activity and sentenced to death by firing squad. The sentence was commuted to ten years’ imprisonment, and having served his term, he returned to his profession, first as conductor, then as composer, settling half-way between Moscow and the Black Sea in Voronezh. Olympia has already given us his four quirkily inventive symphonies, all conducted by Vladimir Verbitsky. Here now is a full length ballet score dating from 1968-69, just after Shostakovich had been instrumental in Nosyrev’s acceptance into the Composers’ Union. The story-line is Turgenev’s tale of two rivals for the hand of the Ferrarese girl, Valeria. She chooses the more genial Fabio, and his rival Muzio leaves the town, returning five years later with tragic consequences.
At the outset Nosyrev draws sympathetic portraits of all three main protagonists. This is wonderfully danceable music, with a touch of aching nostalgia that comes unmistakably from the heart. In fact the neo-Romantic harp writing suggests a jumping-off point somewhere around the slow movement of Rachmaninov’s Third Symphony, while the first pas de deux, for Valeria and Fabio, brings with it a touch of mid-period symphonic Scriabin. Not all the score lives up to its opening promise. In particular “The Song of Triumphant Love” itself, which Muzio has brought hack with him from his painful exile, is less overwhelming than it strives to be. But overall this is undoubtedly the work of a lively and individual creative mind, and it is quite understandable that the ballet should have been given in Voroneth in 23 seasons since its premiere in 1971. Vladimir Verhitsky coaxes vivid, authoritative performances from the Voronezh State Symphony Orchestra. Rather too much reverb has heen added to the otherwise acceptable recording, and the score has been slightly cut in order to fit it on to a single CD. Recommended to anyone on the look out for the neo-Romantic but non-kitsch side of Soviet music.
Gramophone, October 2000
Only on his death in 1981 was Mikhail Nosyrev rehabilitated, after a lifetime of betrayal, imprisonment and then – following intervention by Shostakovich – grudging half-acceptance (as a “non-person” he was denied an entry in the 1976 Soviet Muzykalnaya Entsiklopediyd). Not surprisingly, Shostakovich’s influence lies across the symphonies; in this ballet the sources go back further, to the lyricism of Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninov, with a touch of Scriabin. Per Skans’s excellent insert note outlines the plot, too detailed to be sketched here, except to say that it is based on a rather uncharacteristic story by Turgenev of two love rivals, Fabio and Muzio, for the beautiful Valeria, and the intervention of a sinister Malay mute servant brought back by Muzio from his love-lom travels. A large part is played by the harp (perhaps from Turgenev’s mention of Valeria’s love of singing to the lute, but also because it was Nosyrev’s favourite instrument) and by a solo violin.
The three principal characters are given deft musical portraits, the Malay has some weird music for his sorceries, and the central near tragedy is quite powerfully drawn. The work has been succesful in Russia, especially in the city of Voronezh, which became Nosyrev’s adopted home after he left the gulag, and whose orchestra, under Vladimir Verbitsky, give as committed a performance of the ballet as they have of the symphonies.