Arrgh – I haven’t been as diligent lately in posting my comments and ratings for my selected pieces, and once again, more time has passed than I should have allowed – including a mini-vacay to the Outer Banks of North Carolina – so I apologize, dearest Reader, for the lateness of this entry (we're now into the week of 8/13)Let me get caught up with a few comments on Kabalevsky’s Violin Concerto; however, I am then going to take another brief hiatus as my wife and I wind up the summer at Big Moose Lake in upstate New York (in the Adirondacks), and I’ll return to post and listen to additional pieces as of the week of September 3rd.
Sooo – on to the Kabalevsky. I don’t know much about Kabalevsky the man/composer, but I am familiar with some of his works – particularly the spirited overture to his opera Colas Breugnon (1936, after the novel by Romain Rolland; rev. 1953, 1969) and for his suite The Comedians (1940). Those works are so energetic, I thought I’d give his violin concerto a listen to see if it would match those pieces’ bright and animated character – and to a degree it did. At AllMusic.com, I found this information regarding the concerto: “The Violin Concerto is the first of three instrumental concertos composed by Kabalevsky during the late 1940s and early 1950s and dedicated to the Soviet youth (the others are the Cello Concerto No. 1 and the Piano Concerto No. 3), and was first performed in fall of 1948 by 18-year-old violinist Igor Bezrodny -- not exactly a child, certainly, but the piece is not exactly a simple one either. It seems that Kabalevsky had in mind that each of these three concertos would serve as a model of an advanced study piece for young players….” And this: “Kabalevsky's Violin Concerto is in three relatively brief movements. Snappy rhythms, a main theme with a persistent hemiola, and a cantando second theme in G minor make for a compact, cadenza-less sonata-allegro form first movement (Allegro molto e con brio). The Andante cantabile middle movement is in three clear sections; when the ‘A’ music, with its steadily plodding accompaniment and interesting harmonic twists, returns at the end, the soloist abandons the theme to the orchestra and takes up a flowing obbligato instead. Room is found in the rambunctious Vivace giocoso last movement for a short, transparent cadenza.” The three movements are designated as follows: I. Allegro molto e con brio II. Andante cantabile III. Vivace giocoso The piece is entertaining, energetic, and exuberant – but certainly not to the same level as his more famous pieces I mentioned above. Still, the work is worth a listen!
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A New Hope:As the header above says, each week I will listen to a piece of classical music that I've never heard before, and then I will report out what I thought about it. Archives
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