Yuri Bashmet and the Moscow Soloists Chamber Orchestra

Divertissements, cassations and serenades are notable in Mozart’s music for their tremendous inventiveness and inexhaustible joie de vivre. This was aided by the specific nature of the genre, the name of which comes from the French word divertissement. A musical work of this kind is a cycle for a specific group of musical instruments. Mozart composed divertissements to be performed both outdoors and within premises, he experimented with instrumental groups and was able to compose a work either purely for wind instruments of strings or for a full symphony orchestra. As is typical for many great composers, in these genres Mozart goes far beyond the boundaries of applied and engaging music – many of his divertissements and serenades come close to symphonies and concerti.

Mikael Tariverdiev (1931–1996) was a major Soviet and later Russian composer. He studied at the Ten-Year School of Music and subsequently the Academy of the Conservatoire in Tbilisi. From 1953–1957 he was a student at the Moscow Gnesins’ Music and Teaching Institute where he studied composition under Aram Khachaturian.
Tariverdiev became famous first and foremost because of his music for films (Seventeen Moments of Spring, The Irony Of Fate, or Enjoy Your Bath, An Old-Fashioned Comedy and In Search of the Sun), many of the melodies from which proved absolute hits. The composer has written the music for over one hundred and thirty films.
Tariverdiev was also deeply engaged in classical music. Here his legacy is even greater. He wrote over a hundred romances, five operas (including Graf Cagliostro and Waiting), two ballets (Henrik and The Girl and Death), a series of works for the organ, two violin concerti, a Concerto for Viola and Strings in the Romantic Style (dedicated to Yuri Bashmet), a trio for piano, violin and cello and other works for piano.

Edison Denisov’s Chamber Music for Viola, Harpsichord and Strings was composed at the request of Yuri Bashmet in 1982. The work lasts roughly twelve minutes and stands out for its remarkable simplicity and the lack of virtuoso passages despite the presence of solo sections for the harpsichord and a viola cadenza. According to the composer himself, it could be called a “mini-monologue concerto” as there are almost no elements of the concerto format in the typical understanding of the concept.
Thanks to the performing ensemble, this one-part composition frequently causes allusions with the music of the Baroque and early Classical eras. This is furthered by the timbre of the harpsichord, which hints at associations with the basso continuo part and also the similar sounding string orchestra. An even stronger hint at the music of the “gallant age” comes with the polyphonic composition style. Denisov “splits” the initially monolithic string ensemble into two separate voices. Because of this, practically throughout the entire piece the orchestra appears as the sum total of its soloists, each of them with their own absolutely individual and independent part to play.
Chamber Music has been performed by Yuri Bashmet on numerous occasions with Saulus Sondeckis’ orchestra in Moscow, St Petersburg and the Baltic States.

Pavel Velikanov