Œuvres pour piano

Description

More than five hours of music are gathered here – in a world premiere – to introduce us to the work of Vsevolod Zaderatsky. Having taught music to the tsar's family, the musician spent part of his life in the Magadan gulag in Siberia. He was interned starting in 1926. Returning to Moscow between 1929 and 1934, he mingled with artists without permission to have his works performed. After his internment, he used every scrap of paper available to him and composed, between 1937 and 1938, a series of 24 Preludes, probably after hearing those of Shostakovich. Miraculously preserved, the score was premiered in 2004. Zaderatsky's work was created in urgency. Fear is palpable, deeply ingrained in the obsessive, jarring, and percussive rhythms from the twenties and through the harrowing testimonies of war. The tributes to Chopin and Schumann are fleeting like flashes of a distant memory. We witness a kind of sonic confinement in which the composer expresses reminiscences of faith, like the haunting bells of Mussorgsky, with a barely contained aggression that brings forth the shadows of Prokofiev, Shostakovich, and Scriabin. The writing gets to the essence. Thus, there are sketched dances, ghostly songs, sometimes childlike, yet not neglecting a learned harmony. Jascha Nemtsov translates the pounding of time as if he were taking on a part of the pain, silence, and feverish anxiety of these pages. It is a glimpse into the life of the Russian people confronted with the horrors of that era. A music that is almost cinematic, captivating from start to finish, and all that remains is to hear it in concert… (Jean Dandrésy)