Pianist Anthony Goldstone continues his survey of Russian piano literature for Divine Art in Russian Piano Music, Vol. 3: Reinhold Glière. Glière is best known outside of Russia for his "Russian Sailors Dance" from the ballet The Red Poppy; deeper listeners know him through his huge third symphony "Il'ya Murometz." Glière was one of the shining lights of the Soviet period, a composer born one year behind Rachmaninov who had never left, submerged fully in the language of late romanticism yet entirely tolerant of and ...
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Pianist Anthony Goldstone continues his survey of Russian piano literature for Divine Art in Russian Piano Music, Vol. 3: Reinhold Glière. Glière is best known outside of Russia for his "Russian Sailors Dance" from the ballet The Red Poppy; deeper listeners know him through his huge third symphony "Il'ya Murometz." Glière was one of the shining lights of the Soviet period, a composer born one year behind Rachmaninov who had never left, submerged fully in the language of late romanticism yet entirely tolerant of and maintaining an encouraging disposition toward emergent modernism among his students and younger contemporaries and finally a gracious, patient intermediary between composers in trouble and the Soviet bureaucracy. Ironically, for someone who fared so well in Russia, Glière appears not to himself have been Russian; his mother was Polish and his father Swiss and he was born in Kiev, which in 1875 belonged to the Ukraine. Nevertheless, as his ample catalog of more than 500 works demonstrates,...
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