Lukas Geniušas: Emancipation of Consonance
View record and artist detailsRecord and Artist Details
Composer or Director: Valery Arzumanov, Vladimir Ryabov, Leonid Desyatnikov
Genre:
Instrumental
Label: Melodiya
Magazine Review Date: 03/2016
Media Format: CD or Download
Media Runtime: 69
Mastering:
DDD
Catalogue Number: MELCD100 2409
Tracks:
Composition | Artist Credit |
---|---|
27 Light Pieces for Piano, Movement: Excerpts |
Valery Arzumanov, Composer
Lukas Geniušas, Piano Valery Arzumanov, Composer |
Echoes of Theatre |
Leonid Desyatnikov, Composer
Leonid Desyatnikov, Composer Lukas Geniušas, Piano |
Russian Songs, Movement: Excerpts |
Vladimir Ryabov, Composer
Lukas Geniušas, Piano Vladimir Ryabov, Composer |
Author: David Fanning
Not that this music is uniformly bad. Or even bad at all, if its aim is merely to provide teaching fodder for piano faculties (in which case it could, perhaps generously, be called so-so). Valery Arzumanov was a sometime Messiaen pupil, amazingly enough. It is painful to write ill of one whose childhood was spent partly in the Gulag, where his parents met, but his gift seems to reside primarily in imitating a dinner-party pianist called upon to supply background music at a moment’s notice. Leonid Desyatnikov, from whom the disc’s title derived, has much more about him, and his Echoes of Theatre has the excuse of being derived from scores composed for puppet shows. There is a poetic voice struggling to emerge from some of his pieces, set off against a brittle, Parisian cabaret relish of the kind indulged in (albeit with a good deal more edginess) by the young Shostakovich, or an occasional neo-classical flourish that recalls Pulcinella, only for that comparison immediately to highlight the difference in class. Ryabov sets himself the task of arranging more or less familiar Russian folksongs, using an idiom that rarely approaches the sophistication of his 19th-century forebears and only ever matches the most mediocre of them in inventiveness. ‘Down Piterskaya Street’ is especially painful to anyone who remembers what Stravinsky did with this song in Petrushka.
Lukas Geniušas does nothing to disguise the rudimentary quality of this music. Rather his unyieldingly harsh tone and unsophisticated phrasing highlight it, not helped by an instrument and recording quality that seem determined to reinforce the impression.
Discover the world's largest classical music catalogue with Presto Music.
Gramophone Digital Club
- Digital Edition
- Digital Archive
- Reviews Database
- Full website access
From £8.75 / month
SubscribeGramophone Full Club
- Print Edition
- Digital Edition
- Digital Archive
- Reviews Database
- Full website access
From £11.00 / month
Subscribe
If you are a library, university or other organisation that would be interested in an institutional subscription to Gramophone please click here for further information.