Alexey Shor (b. 1970)
Travel Notebook, Suite for piano and orchestra No. 1 (2016/19)
Violin Concerto No. 4 (2021/22)
Anna Ulaieva (piano), Marc Bouchkov (violin)
Kyiv Virtuosi/ Dmitri Yablonsky, John Warner
rec. 2023 Teatro Marrucino, Chieti, Italy.
World premiere recordings
Naxos 8.579139 [60]
A great many composers have had careers in other fields, some through necessity some, through choice. Four of Russia’s Mighty Handful had military or naval careers while Borodin was a chemist. In France, Roussel’s early career was in the French navy as was that of Jean Cras. In America, Charles Ives sold insurance, while in England Dennis ApIvor was for most of his life a doctor. So, too, Ukrainian-born American-naturalised composer Alexey Shor born Alexey Vladimorovich Kononenko; he spent most of his early career as a mathematician and then as a hedge fund manager. He has been composing only since 2012. Since 2017 he has been associate composer with the Armenian State Symphony Orchestra, a position he has held at the Menuhin school since 2022. In the 2024-26 season, he will hold the same position with the Oxford Philharmonic. Artists of international standing including Salvatore Accardo, Steven Isserlis, Evgeny Kissin, and Mikhail Pletnev, to name but a few, have programmed his works. The two concertante works heard here are arrangements of a solo piano work and the string orchestra version of what was originally for full orchestra. To call the melodic and harmonic language, and formal construction traditional would be an understatement.
The seven-movement Travel Notebook, Suite for Piano and Orchestra No. 1 offers personal impressions of places he has visited. Barcelona is represented by its very busy thoroughfare La Rambla, although the music is neither particularly busy nor Catalonian. The piano is placed very far forward, and it is fortunate that young Ukrainian- Austrian pianist Anna Ulaieva is a charismatic advocate for the work. The Luxembourg Garden inspired by the Jardin du Luxembourg in Paris likewise seems to bear no relation to the garden’s history or current usage. I could detect nothing particularly French, of any period, in its almost four minutes’ duration. The three Italian inspired movements are not coloured by any of the centuries old Italian musical tradition. The finale, entitled Horseman, based on a visit to Royal Ascot is neither English sounding nor equestrian. If none of the music sounds particularly evocative of any of the places it is meant to evoke it is at least well-structured and scored. The piano writing is virtuosic in a late Romantic style. Maybe as support to a travelogue film it might work but I am afraid I was not transported from my study in Northern England.
With the Violin Concerto No. 4 which was composed during the Covid pandemic we are firmly in territory that is intellectually Baroque but with Romantic passion. It is once again very well put together but really never gets above sounding like good pastiche. Even Karl Jenkins’ works have a contemporary spine. Belgian violinist of Russian-Ukrainian heritage Marc Bouchkov, who was a silver medallist at the 2019 Tchaikovsky International Competition (the year Alexandre Kantorow won gold for piano), is a passionate player and approaches the work as though it were great music. His tuning is impeccable, and he has a rich tone in all registers. There are nine videos of live performances of this work, all by different artists available on YouTube, including the great Gil Shaham, so it clearly has an audience.
The soloists are sensitively accompanied by the Kyiv Virtuosi, a youthful orchestra with an average age of thirty that unites talented musicians from all over Ukraine. Both conductors deliver tightly held readings. The recording, apart from the forward pacing of the soloists, is very fine and I am sure whoever sponsored the recordings will be very pleased with the outcome.
Listening to these works and others available on YouTube, I am at a loss to explain Dr Shor’s success. Yes the works are well put together but to ignore the entire 20th or 21st century of musical development is something I simply do not understand. The composers I mentioned at the beginning all had mentors or teachers. Dr Shor admits in interviews that he is self-taught, mostly from listening to 18th or 19th century music and from reading books on orchestration. That he has achieved so much is admirable, but unless he can find a mentor or teacher who could guide his obvious gifts, I do not feel that he will move beyond the very skilful pastiches he currently writes.
Paul RW Jackson
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