Russian composer Boris Tishchenko studied with Dmitri Shostakovich during that composer's later years and was also influenced by another teacher (and Shostakovich student), Galina Ustvolskaya: her bent toward unusual instrumental combinations is audible in the 2006 Concerto for violin, piano, and string orchestra recorded here. Tishchenko has been sparsely programmed and recorded outside Russia, perhaps because there's a superficial similarity to Shostakovich in his music: he uses traditional forms, refers to the past in ...
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Russian composer Boris Tishchenko studied with Dmitri Shostakovich during that composer's later years and was also influenced by another teacher (and Shostakovich student), Galina Ustvolskaya: her bent toward unusual instrumental combinations is audible in the 2006 Concerto for violin, piano, and string orchestra recorded here. Tishchenko has been sparsely programmed and recorded outside Russia, perhaps because there's a superficial similarity to Shostakovich in his music: he uses traditional forms, refers to the past in the same way, and is not far from his teacher in terms of tonality. Get beyond these factors to the meat of the music, though, and he's his own man. In the concerto, the roles of the violin and piano are differentiated in novel ways. Sample the second-movement rondo, where the folkish theme is the job of the piano alone; only later does that theme develop into the main material of the movement. Shostakovich did not treat concerto textures in this way. If you've thought that it was hard...
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