Russian violinist Roman Mints has made a specialty of playing new music, and on this album he plays three concertos written around the turn of the millennium. The title of Canadian composer Marjan Mozetich's Affairs of the Heart gives hint of the work's unabashedly Romantic idiom. Mozetich began his career steeped in modernism, but later turned to a more overtly emotional and expressive musical language, and absorbed the kind of minimalism associated with Philip Glass. Parts of his single-movement concerto sound derivative ...
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Russian violinist Roman Mints has made a specialty of playing new music, and on this album he plays three concertos written around the turn of the millennium. The title of Canadian composer Marjan Mozetich's Affairs of the Heart gives hint of the work's unabashedly Romantic idiom. Mozetich began his career steeped in modernism, but later turned to a more overtly emotional and expressive musical language, and absorbed the kind of minimalism associated with Philip Glass. Parts of his single-movement concerto sound derivative of Glass in it harmonic and rhythmic patterns, and other parts are purely neo-romantic. Elena Langer, a Russian composer who has settled in Britain, is more strongly eclectic, and doesn't shun the abstractions of modernism in her two-movement concerto, Platch (Crying). The second movement is ethereally beautiful, the violin soulfully keening in its highest register over a very slowly evolving orchestral murmur. Schnittke's 1994 Concerto for Three features violin, viola, and cello,...
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