Aram Khachaturian (1903-1978)
Symphony 1 in E minor (1934)
Dance Suite (1933)
Robert Schumann Philharmonic/Frank Beermann
rec. 2014, Lukaskirche, Dresden
cpo 777 919-2 [73]

The problem with the music presented here is that, even if you don’t know these pieces, as I didn’t, you’ll feel as if you’ve heard it all before.

The three-movement symphony begins promisingly. The first movement’s introduction develops into a typically chromatic, winding violin theme, and surges nicely into the climax. The waltzy low-wind transition in dotted rhythms that follows is a marked contrast, as is the “real” second theme, segmented and unstable. A fugato for strings ensues – and you may begin to see one of the problems. All the music is colourful and pleasingly tuneful, but, despite maintaining a convincing flow, the various episodes seem completely unrelated.

Some lightly scored passages – including an odd doubling in string harmonics that resembles a flexatone – are remarkably haunting and evocative, but these musical gestures would all repeat themselves over the composer’s career. Little clarinet duets are spiced up with “Oriental,” or at least Armenian. flavorings; other passages resemble, or foreshadow, Gayane and the other ballets. Even those winding chromatic melodies, some adorned with further curlicues, bring a distinct expressiveness, but turn into a mere compositional tic.

The Adagio sostenuto is, again, by turns exploratory and surging; just as you think it’s winding down, it extends into a different episode, with its own big buildup! The rhythmically animated Allegro risoluto finale, with its nice uplift, probably comes off best; the climax is joyous, though I wasn’t quite sure how we got there.

The grim opening of the Dance Suite, which preceded the symphony by a year, suggest an “Age of Steel” piece out of Prokofiev or Shostakovich. After that, however, we return to the familiar textural and melodic tropes, though at least it’s logical for a “dance suite” to sound like dance music. Those grim opening bars of the Trans-Caucasian Dance settle into a lullaby like that from Gayne; the ensuing Armenian Dance is straightforwardly rhythmic; the closing lezginkais perky and graceful. On the other hand, the extended Uzbek Dance, with its linear dissonances and trenchant brass solos, strikes in a different direction. Later in the movement, an extended atmospheric passage, calm but not quite static, closes in a desolate English-horn solo – it isn’t very dancey at all.

You can’t fault the playing. Under Frank Beermann, the members of the Schumann-Philharmonie, based in Chemnitz, play with an energy to match any Russian ensemble while outdoing them in executant polish. Tempi always seem just right and, save for a brief patch of confused scansion in the Uzbek Dance, the phrasing is clear.

So there it is. You might want to check it out. But you mightn’t need to, really.

Stephen Francis Vasta
stevedisque.wordpress.com/blog