Piano
SKU:
HL.48025440
Piaon
Solo Part. Composed
by Leokadiya Kashperova.
BH Piano. Classical,
Concerto. Softcover.
Duration 2040 seconds.
Boosey and Hawkes
#M060142024. Published by
Boosey and Hawkes
(HL.48025440).
ISBN
9781784549060. UPC:
196288216391.
Leoka
diya Kashperova
(1872–1940), hitherto
consigned to a footnote
in musical history as
Stravinsky's piano
teacher, is undergoing
rediscovery. A double
graduate of the St
Petersburg Conservatoire,
she emerged as a virtuoso
pianist and composer in
the romantic tradition.
She was associated with
some of the great
musicians of her day,
including Balakirev and
Auer. She performed in
both Germany and the UK
in the 1900s, but her
career petered out after
1920. The Piano Concerto
(1900) is Kashperova's
earliest surviving
orchestral work, and it
was premiered by the
composer the following
year in Moscow and St
Petersburg, bringing her
much wider recognition
and paving the way for an
international career.
Cast in three movements
and in a Romantic idiom,
pianistic virtuosity is
often channelled into the
pianist's left hand,
which is required to
negotiate widely-spaced
'extreme' arpeggios –
awkwardly angular when
adagio, fiendishly
technical when molto
allegro. Kashperova's
orchestral colours are
achieved by felicitous
solos for the woodwind,
horns and brass.
Noteworthy, too, are
unexpected glimpses of
chamber music when, in
the last movement for
example, the piano
combines fleetingly with
solo violin and solo
cello in passages. The
concerto's quick music
(Molto allegro and
Allegro con anima)
admirably portrays the
vivacious personality of
their composer, described
in 1906 as offering those
around her 'an abundance
of joy, excitement and
fun'. The central
movement, by contrast, is
a tender Adagio which
offers the listener a gem
of musical poetry.
