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Georgy Sviridov

Georgy Vasilyevich Sviridov was a Soviet-era Russian composer, probably best-known internationally for his choral and other vocal works: cantatas, oratorios, hymns. etc.. Russians of a certain age will remember him for his piece Time, Forward! part of which was used as the theme for the TV evening news broadcast «Время». As well as a substantial corpus of choruses, film scores & the like, he also produced some chamber music, which is the focus of the present CD.

Sviridov had studied with Shostakovich, nine years his senior, with the older man's influence strongly evident on the pieces included here. Sviridov's 'Piano Trio', written in 1945 and revised ten years later, is, at times, very reminiscent of Shostakovich's 2nd Trio written the year before: such in the piano chords in the agitated Scherzo second movement. Elsewhere (so Iossif Rajskin's booklet notes inform me), Sviridov was more broadly inspired by the Russian tradition of elegaic music for piano trio in general. The piece was a success, and earned Sviridov a Stalin Prize the following year.

On the same composer's 'Piano Quintet', the Beethoven Trio Bonn (Jinsang Lee, piano; Mikhail Ovrutsky, violin; Grigory Alumyan, cello) were joined by violinist Artur Chermonov and violist Vladimir Babeshko. It was likewise composed in '45, and shares in the Trio's post-war blend of trauma and euphoria. Again there are some Shostakovichian moments, notably in its fiery finalé. The Quintet is also enjoyable, if a tad less so than the Trio. It's hard to believe it had to wait until this album's release in 2017 for its first-ever recording. 

This very engaging, wonderfully-played, well-recorded disc is rounded out by one further short piece, an arrangement of another of Sviridov's soundrack cues which found widespread standalone popularity, namely his: '"Romance" from "The Snowstorm: musical illustrations after a novella by A. Pushkin, for Orchestra."'

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