Dmitri Klebanov-Japanese Silhouettes & Viola Concerto

Ess.a.y records made a bold move and did a tremendous service to (specialty) audiences in 1997 by releasing this absolute gem of a disc of music by the practically unknown composer Dmitri Klebanov.

Japanese Silhouettes is part song cycle yet at the same time a Concerto for ViolaD'amore. Odd combination but I'm happy it is, the results are wonderful. The Viola Concerto is melancholic
and lyrical, a fantastic and inventive work. Sadly the only other disc that I'm aware of with Klebanov's
music is a 2 disc set on Angelok called "Ukraine Composer Series 1" and it features music of other
practically unknown composers as well. I wanted to buy it but Amazon has a seller asking $85.00
USD for it! -Enjoy!

Ukrainian composer Dmitri Lvovich Klebanov (1907–1987) is one of a long row of Soviet composers who have more or less disappeared completely from sight. He composed in most genres, including operas and symphonies.

Klebanov studied music academically as a pianist, violist, conductor, and composer, and became a professor of composition at the Kharkov Conservatory. In the late 1930s and early 1940s a couple of ballets, a violin concerto, and a symphony received major performances in Moscow and Kiev. Unfortunately, the first symphony "In Memoriam to the Martyrs of Baba Yar" (1945) fell afoul of Stalinist critics who found it anti-patriotic. Being accused of distortion of the historic truth about the Soviet people and of national narrow-mindedness it was exiled for a life in archives. Stalin made his infamous attack on Soviet artists. The Soviet Composers' Union adopted the unwritten rule that one composer would be selected to take the heat for all of them—Klebanov was it. Although Klebanov was spared exile to Siberia, or worse, he was relegated to an obscure existence and spent most of this period composing politically correct works of "socialist realism" with titles like Ode for the Party and "First of May" Symphony. Following thirty years in de facto exile, Klebanov thawed out with the rest of the USSR in the 1980s.

In 1983 Mela Tenenbaum (violinist/violist) was in Kharkov, Ukraine, to play a viola concerto written for her by a pupil of Klebanov, whom she met after the concert. Klebanov suggested Ms. Tenenbaum perform his own Violin Concerto, and after the success of that venture the following season, he wrote a viola concerto expressly for her. This work had a positive reception in several Russian cities and Klebanov found his long-stifled creative energies reviving. Another new work followed, Japanese Silhouettes for soprano, viola d'amore and instrumental ensemble, based on haiku texts translated into Russian. This work was recorded for Radio Kiev with soprano Natalia Kraftzova, and a "rehabilitation" of Klebanov seemed imminent. But the composer died in 1987, just short of his 80th birthday, and soon artistic chaos engulfed the disintegrating Soviet Union. His music disappeared and was thought to have been lost in a fire and flood which destroyed the Musical Foundation building where his scores were kept.

Klebanov_Japanese_Silhouettes.zip

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