Roslavets: Chamber Symphony & In the Hours of the New Moon

Featuring

Ilan Volkov
BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra
Nikolai Roslavets

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Historical Context

Roslavets welcomed the 1917 revolutions and after the Bolshevik Revolution, he was made director of Kharkov Conservatory and later held a position in the State Publishing House.

Compositional Technique

Roslavets developed a new harmonic system based on 'synthetic chords' that contain both horizontal and vertical sound-material for a work, a concept close to Schoenberg's early serialism.

Performer Biography

Ilan Volkov, the conductor on this album, was appointed Chief Conductor of the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra in 2003, becoming the youngest person to hold such a position with a BBC orchestra.

Composer Biography

Nikolay Roslavets, a fascinating figure in Russian music, genuinely came from a peasant background, unlike most of his contemporaries in the early Soviet period.

Composition History

The Chamber Symphony, considered Roslavets's most important symphonic work, was composed between May 1934 and February 1935 but he was unsuccessful in securing a performance.

Critical Reception

Roslavets's works were attacked by adherents of 'proletarian music' as counter-revolutionary and bourgeois art, leading to him being denounced as an 'enemy of the People' in 1929.

Critical Reception

After his death, Roslavets's name was expunged from music dictionaries and hardly mentioned in Soviet musical literature for thirty years, except in derogatory terms.