NIKOLAI KORNDORF (1947-2001): Concerto capriccioso for Cello, Strings and Percussion, Triptych for Cello and Piano, Passacaglia for Solo Cello.

Description: Korndorf's music makes connections between folk, sacred, classical, minimalist and popular styles with Russian Orthodox chant and Russian bells always somewhere in the background, either deeper or more transparent. The 1986 concerto is in two movements, beginning with the ethereal, fairy-like tintinnabulation of small bells behind the soloist and eventually building to an impassioned climax with much larger bells ringing around the halfway point before the movement gently subsides to near inaudibility at the end of its 19 minutes. The second movement, just under ten minutes, truly erases the boundaries between western art music, non-western folk music, ritual and rock music in its minimalist course into which a rock drummer suddenly obtrudes, as well as the introduction to the coda of the Beethoven Seventh's first movement. The 1998-99 Triptych's first movement straddles Russian folk lament and the lamento of baroque opera seria, the second is a simple, naive-sounding movement inspired by neo-primitivist paintings by a handicapped Canadian artist while the finale dips deeply into Orthodox ritual, psalmody and prayer. The 1999 Passacaglia, not a short piece in its three movements which last 23 minutes, is an instrumental retelling of Dante's Divine Comedy (the quotes from Dante in the work's score are reproduced, with translation, in the booklet), in which the first part - Inferno - is characterised by microtonality, Purgatorio being chromatic with the cellist reciting the texts and Paradiso diatonic with the soloist now singing the words and also whistling (!). Alexander Ivashkin (cello), Anya Alexeyev (piano), Russian Philharmonic Orchestra; Konstantin Krimets.