Gramophone, March 2002

The emergence of a strong, all-but-unknown creative personality from the Russian provinces has been one of the happiest of Olympia’s many finds. This is the fifth CD of their series devoted to Mikhail Nosyrev, who in 1943, as a 19-year-old student, was denounced by one of his teachers and imprisoned for 10 years for “counter-revolutionary agitation”. He ended up as a conductor in Voronezh, and like many of his generation did not live to see his rehabilitation under Gorbachev.

The juxtaposition of the first two works on the disc – the Capriccio of 1957 and the Piano Concerto from 1974 – is striking indeed. The Capriccio is a fairly anonymous exercise in traditional Russian style. But the Concerto is an uninhibited bash that could give many a Schnittke work a run for its money. After a rather slackly composed “improvised” first movement comes a furious, post-Bartokian Ritmo ostinato, and a serious-minded finale that strikes what might seem to be an impossible balance. The final evaporation is a convincing expressive outcome for a work that transcends its own experimental enthusiasm. Its qualities almost persuaded me to disregard the unpleasantly acidic recorded piano tone.

The Four Preludes for Harp are attractively Ravelian, the Rachmaninovian Fairy Tale worth hearing, if only as an example of music actually composed in the Siberian gulag. As in previous issues Per Skans supplies an outstandingly informative essay.