Catalogue Connection: 25198

Previous albums of Vyacheslav Artyomov’s music released by Divine Art have had catchy titles, based on one of the works that they included—The Way to Olympus, A Symphony of Elegies, and the like. This time we get Album XI, presumably because this is the label’s 11th Artyomov release and it is something of a grab bag. (Initially I thought the CD was dedicated to the President of the People’s Republic of China, but that does not appear to be the case.)

All kidding aside, Album XI is a collection of the composer’s chamber works, some composed as early as 1966, when he was in his 20s (the Sonata and the Four Armenian Duets), and the most recent from 1983 (Hymns of Sudden Wafts—a very Artyomovian title).

The composer’s penchant for unconventional instrumentation comes to the fore in several of these works. Litany I, for example, is for a quartet of saxophones, and Litany II is for a quartet of flutes. The Capriccio, which closes this CD, is for two saxophones and an odd array of percussion (including flexatone), and the Hymns, which open it, are for saxophone, harpsichord, and piano. The Hymns are my favorite work on this CD, as they most effectively combine the composer’s tastes for mysticism and gentle avant-garde experimentation. The first Hymn, marked Allegro, is only three minutes long, and it flirts with Messiaen in its writing for piano. It serves as an introduction to the Lento second Hymn, which is almost eight times longer, and sounds like what The Unanswered Question might have sounded like had Charles Ives lived in the Soviet Union instead of selling insurance in New England. On the other hand, the piano arpeggios in its middle remind me of Morton Feldman—no bad thing! Becalmed yet moody, it appeals to me in a way that is both rational and emotional. This work is meant as a nature piece—or so it says in the booklet note—but don’t expect musical depictions of birds twittering and brooks rushing. Artyomov has more cosmic fish to fry.

The Sunday Sonata is of interest because there are so few sonatas for bassoon and piano, and this is a good one. Artyomov wrote this as a competition piece in 1977, and I want to say that it challenges the bassoonist’s interpretive skills as much as, if not more than, his or her technical skills. Virtuosity takes a back seat to the performers’ ability to weave together a meaningful narrative from this series of bardic pronouncements. The Sunday Sonata was dedicated to the performers who play it here, and I can’t imagine how anyone could play it better.

The Four Armenian Duets are a souvenir from one of the composer’s frequent visits to Armenia during the Soviet era. These works are striking for the way in which the composer blends his personal style with Armenian folk styles. The writing for soprano and mezzo-soprano, much of it polyphonic, is most effective—plaintive and earthy—and the two performers (sisters?) make a strong impression.

These recordings, some live and others studio-based, were made over a period of more than two decades, and they have the ring of authenticity. All of them were remastered in 2020 in England, so everything sounds fresh and up-to-date, and nothing jars.

Artyomov turns (or has turned) 80 this year. His photograph on the booklet’s back cover might not be recent, and neither are any of these works or recordings, but his music has staying power, perhaps because of its spiritual strength. Conductor Teodor Currentzis called him the “Bruckner of the 21st century,” and even in these chamber works, one can hear the massiveness and depth of his imagination. Is this the best place to start exploring his music? Probably not (I am partial to his Requiem), but if you have not started exploring it, please consider doing so soon.

Vyacheslav Artyomov (b. 1940) stands as one of the leading Russian composers of his generation. Like so many artists of the postwar USSR, he won little recognition for his work; but since around 1990 his music has become better known internationally. His style is consistently dissonant, but it is more the French style of euphonious dissonance (i.e. the post Debussy style of Varese or Messiaen) than the German (Viennese school and serialism). His music often reveals lovely vertical sounds (beautifully spaced chords you couldn’t begin to analyze!), and it is often static, with little sense of motion or harmonic pull. The best example here is the second of the Hymns of Sudden Wafts, which has a metronome mark­ing of eighth note=19. We have some serious stasis here, and the piece goes on for 23 min­utes!

The fine liner notes by Robert Matthew Walker refer to Artyomov’s roots in the Rus­sian stream of consciousness style, fed by music of the Orthodox church and Russian folk style. These pieces (with 18 different per­formers) show a lot of variety, particularly in instrumentation. The Hymns of Sudden Wafts are for saxophone, piano, and harpsichord; Litany I is for four saxophones, and Litany II requires four flutes. The Sunday Sonata is really a bassoon sonata, and the Clarinet Sonata is unaccompanied.

I have no reservations about the quality of Artyomov’s music or the sincerity of his mes­sage. His language, though, requires patience and a willingness to accept his drawn out time frame and “new age” spirit. The perfor­mances all seem very good, and the sonics (Divine Art has already presented 10 CDs of Artyomov) are excellent. This, then, is a fine introduction to Artyomov’s chamber style. Perhaps a better introduction would be a larger work such as his Requiem, which has been widely acclaimed. That recording has problems, but it would be a better introduc­tion to his music.

Vyacheslav Artyomov turned 80 this year. His reputation may rest significantly on large-scale orchestral works, such as the Requiem and his seven symphonies (so far), but he has written much instrumental and chamber music, very little of it in traditional combinations: hence quartets of flutes and saxophones rather than strings. Divine Art’s series of (mostly) reissued recordings has already included a number of these smaller-scale works, to which this 11th collection, remastered from the composer’s archive, of performances given between 1970 and 1991, adds enormously to our picture of his output.

To a degree, ‘chamber music’ is as inaccurate a description of these works as it is of Beethoven’s late quartets. This is genre-bursting creativity in which the number of performers is entirely incidental. This is exemplified by the atmospheric diptych Hymns of Sudden Wafts (1981-83), ostensibly a trio for saxophonist —playing soprano and tenor instruments —harpsichord and piano but feeling more like an orchestral score, especially in the 23-minute concluding Lento. The structurally and expressively complex Capriccio on the ’75 New Year Eve (1975), another trio, for two saxophones and percussion, is similarly big-boned; however, the two Litanies — respectively for quartets of saxophones (1977) and flutes (1981) — are more ‘intimate’. So, too, are the brief, virtuoso Solo Clarinet Sonata of 1966 and the aphoristic Armenian Duets of the same year, in which last the composer beautifully accompanied the Lisitsian sisters, `c1970′.

Wonderfully played, sensationally restored, all of this music deserves to be much more widely known outside Russia. Heartily recommended.

Often it is instructive to explore a particular composer in terms of the different style shades you may hear in contrasting ensemble sizes and general forms. Take living Russian composer Vyacheslav Artyomov, for example. Divine Art has been releasing or re-releasing a good amount of his music in the last few years. Much of it has been for orchestra. Now we get the chance to hear more of his chamber music in the recent Album XI (Divine Art dda 25198).

I’ve covered some of the more orchestrally oriented releases happily on these pages (type his name in the search box at the top left of this page to see those). The music on these albums gives us the High Modernist post-Scriabin, post-Shostakovich Artyomov and does so with a dramatic flair. Album XI brings us the chamber aspect of his version of the style. But it also gives you works that show a pronounced affinity with Avant Jazz shades of things as well. “Hymns of Sudden Wafts” (1983) features some exploratory energy for soprano and tenor sax plus piano and harpsichord. So also listen in this vein to “Litany I” for saxophone quartet and “Litany II” for three flutes and alto flute, and then the flighty “Capriccio on the ’75 New Year” (1975), a distinguished Improv-New Music intersection for soprano and baritone saxes and vibraphone.

The other works included in this volume have less overtly Jazz-oriented roots. They are dynamic and well-conceived regardless. I respond gladly to the rangy exploration of the solo clarinet in “Sonata”(1966), the dramatic balance of “Sunday Sonata” (1977) for bassoon and piano, and the sharp and stirring resonance of “Four Armenian Duets” (1966) for soprano, mezzo-soprano and piano.

The sum total of the program of Album XI gives us a fully rounded look at chamber Artyomov and affirms that he belongs in our attention span as a Russian voice of true merit, a Modern stylist of originality and inventive strength. I recommend this one heartily.