Naxos to Survey Vassiliev Guitar Works

courtesy of Yuri Liberzon

Towards the end of last month, Naxos released the first album in a projected series presenting compositions for guitar by Konstantin Vassiliev. The composer was born in Siberian Russia in 1970; and the series is being curated by guitarist Yuri Liberzon, who was also born in the same region. Several of the tracks on the album were written for Liberzon.

This is another one of those cases in which Amazon.com has not done justice to the distribution of the recording. Fortunately, one can turn to the usual alternative of Presto Music for better treatment. The Web page for this album accommodates both the CD and download options for MP3, FLAC, and Hi-Res FLAC, all of which include the digital version of the accompanying booklet. (The Amazon download page does not include that booklet, and there is no Web page for physical distribution.)

Listening to this album in its entirety will give one an impressive sense of the breadth of Vassiliev’s approaches to composition. The first three tracks constitute a suite entitled Hommage à Tom Jobim. Antônio Carlos Jobim is best known for his bossa nova tunes, but each of the three movements of Vassiliev’s suite accounts for a different aspect of Jobim’s creativity. Similarly, a Latin perspective on jazz can be found in “The Jazz Story,” one of the tracks dedicated to Liberzon.

Less expected and decidedly more ambitious is an extended (seven and a half minutes) fantasy entitled “Synestha,” which explores thematic material from Alexander Scriabin’s Opus 20 piano concerto in F-sharp minor. The two-movement “Canto e Danza,” on the other hand, seems to reflect the fifteen Cançons i danses pieces composed by Federico Mompou (one of which was explicitly written for guitar). Then there is the “Dance of the Skomorokhs,” the final track on the album and the second of the two 2005 Russian Pieces. This will probably be familiar to most listeners, since it is the theme that Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky appropriated for his “1812” overture.

Both of those Russian Pieces were scored for two guitars. Liberzon is joined by Patrick O’Connell for their performance. Similarly, “Obrío,” which reflects both Russian and Latin influences, is a duo composition. However, more interesting is the aforementioned diversity across the thirteen solo tracks. By the end of this album, I found myself curious about whether that scope of diversity will widen further when the second album in this series is released.