This release by the ARC Ensemble is part of a Chandos series devoted to composers working in exile. In this case, the exile was internal; like his better-known colleagues, composer Dmitri Klebanov ran afoul of the Soviet cultural bureaucracy and was barred from official posts. Listening to the opening String Quartet No. 4 here, it's hard to understand why; compared with Shostakovich's music of the same period (1946), it's pretty easy on the ears. It may be that the trouble lay in the opening of this quartet, with the melody ...
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This release by the ARC Ensemble is part of a Chandos series devoted to composers working in exile. In this case, the exile was internal; like his better-known colleagues, composer Dmitri Klebanov ran afoul of the Soviet cultural bureaucracy and was barred from official posts. Listening to the opening String Quartet No. 4 here, it's hard to understand why; compared with Shostakovich's music of the same period (1946), it's pretty easy on the ears. It may be that the trouble lay in the opening of this quartet, with the melody anglophones will know as the Carol of the Bells. Klebanov, who was Jewish, dedicated it to the memory of the tune's composer, Mykola Leontovych, who was shot under murky circumstances by Soviet government agents. Klebanov continued writing music, some of it in the officially approved vein, like the Piano Trio No. 2 of 1958, and then, after being rehabilitated during Khrushchev's Thaw, in a more modern vein influenced by Shostakovich and Bartók. The String Quartet No. 5 of 1965 is an...
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