Naxos' derivative imprint Marco Polo was rightly billed in the 1980s and '90s as "the label of discovery," and one of the most important discoveries it made was the long forgotten orchestral music of conductor Igor Markevitch. Self-styled as the last discovery of impresario Sergei Diaghilev and married to the daughter of dancer Vaslav Nijinsky, Markevitch continued the 1920s-era modernist style set forth by composers such as Stravinsky, Prokofiev, Honegger, and Varèse into the 1930s when Stravinsky and Prokofiev had moved ...
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Naxos' derivative imprint Marco Polo was rightly billed in the 1980s and '90s as "the label of discovery," and one of the most important discoveries it made was the long forgotten orchestral music of conductor Igor Markevitch. Self-styled as the last discovery of impresario Sergei Diaghilev and married to the daughter of dancer Vaslav Nijinsky, Markevitch continued the 1920s-era modernist style set forth by composers such as Stravinsky, Prokofiev, Honegger, and Varèse into the 1930s when Stravinsky and Prokofiev had moved into neo-classicism, Honegger into the movies, and Varèse into his long, self-imposed silence as a composer. Well before Varèse finally picked up the ball again, Markevitch was trapped in a compositional silence of his own, one that would last the rest of his life.Naxos has decided to migrate its Marco Polo Markevitch series to the main catalog, and the Naxos release Igor Markevitch: Complete Orchestral Works, Vol. 2, was originally Volume 1 on Marco. It contains what may well be...
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