Chamber Works

Description

L'Ensemble ARC (Artists of The Royal Conservatory) is among the most distinguished cultural ambassadors of Canada. It is dedicated to the research and recovery of music suppressed under the totalitarian regimes of the twentieth century and subsequently marginalized. Exile is generally associated with geographical displacement, but the idea of "internal exile" has long been the idea of "inner exile." There was an extended variety of this exile in the Soviet Union: State surveillance over the style and substance of music began in the 1920s and persisted well after Stalin's death in 1953. Unlike the composers of Central Europe who were murdered or exiled under National Socialism, and whose music is now being evaluated and revived, a large number of music from the Soviet era still awaits attention. The Ukrainian-Jewish composer Dmitri Klebanov was a kind of prodigy, but he drew the ire of the authorities with his first symphony. Confronted by the authorities with his first symphony, dating from 1945 (based, like Shostakovich's Thirteenth, on the massacre of Jews at Babi Yar). His professional rehabilitation began during the Khrushchev era when, in 1960, the Kharkiv Institute appointed him associate professor. In addition to the works recorded here, Klebanov's legacy includes nine symphonies, two concertos for violin and cello, various works for violin and piano, several operas and ballets, as well as nearly a million pieces. Several operas and ballets, about a hundred songs (of which most remain handwritten), and a dozen film scores.