Friday, November 4, 2022

Larry Sitsky's Russian Futurism book and music recordings


Larry Sitsky is a prominent Australian composer; the guy who does the myaskofiev 2 Twitter account, Melvyn Madigan, tells me Sitsky is well known as a composer in Australia, although perhaps most respected as an academic, writer and pianist. He's also Australia's most commissioned composer, Madigan tells me. 

Sitsky has tried to promote the music I write about  here in two different ways.

His book, Music of the Repressed Russian Avant-Garde, 1900-1929, covers the music I write about in this blog. It is written for musicologists, but I was able to understand parts of it, such as Sitsky's contention that Alexander Mosolov's piano sonatas are just as good as Prokofiev's. It's a pretty expensive book, unfortunately, and I can't afford it. 

Sitsky also has recorded an album, Russian Rarities, which has almost four hours of piano music. The composers featured on the album are Vladimir Deshevov, Arthur Lourie, Alexander Mosolov, Nicolai Obukhov, Leonid Polovinkin, Vladimir Rebikov, Nikolai Roslavets, Anton Rubinstein and Vladimir Scherbakov. 

Sitsky's notes on the album are available online. He writes, "Were it not for the eventual Stalinist suppression, the group of composers represented on these CDs could well have led and surpassed their European counterparts in their sheer audacity and exuberance." If you stream the album, you can download the digital booklet. 



1 comment:

  1. It sounds like an interesting book. I googled "Russian Futurism" and "Russian Futurism Music" yesterday. One article related Stravinsky to Futurism. None of the articles I looked at mentioned Shostakovich, which surprised me.

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