Alexey Shor (b.1970)
Composer’s Notebook 4
rec. 2023, Chieti, Italy, 2023
Naxos 8.579142 [69]

The first thing to say is that if you like your contemporary music innovative and challenging, this disc is not for you. At its best, it is modestly well-made in an idiom which prioritises melodic invention and traditional harmony.

According to Wikipedia, the composer known as Alexey Shor was born Alexey Vladimirovich Konenko in what was then the Soviet Republic of Ukraine. Along with his parents, he left for Israel in 1991. Later, the future composer left for the USA where, in 1996, he gained a Ph.D in mathematics. Between 1996 and 2016 he worked for a Long Island Hedge Fund, Renaissance Technologies, becoming very rich in these years. It was during his time with Renaissance Technologies, in 2012, that he began to write music. Apparently, a friend, the violist David Aaron Carpenter happened to see one of Shor’s scores on his disc and admired it. Shor changed paths, continuing, for four more years to write music while still working in the world of investment. His trajectory in the musical world has since been extraordinary. His website tells the reader that his work “has been performed at some of the most prestigious concert halls”, including Wiener Musikverein, Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, the Concertgebouw etc. It also contains the information that his works have been performed by many great artists of our time, such as Salvatore Accardo, Gauutier Capuçon, Steven Isserlis, Shlomo Mintz, Michael Pletnev, and Maxim Vengerov. He has held appointments as Composer in Residence or Associate Composer with the Armenian State Symphony Orchestra, the Yehudi Menuhin School and the Oxford Philharmonic Orchestra. All-in-all, remarkable achievements for a man who seems to have had little or no formal musical training. Not surprisingly there have been some cynical responses to all of this. Underlying most of the cynicism are two major reservations – first, that Shor’s music is somewhat bland and lacking in individuality and that he may have used his wealth to encourage/arrange performances of his work.

These are not questions into which I am able to enter, nor should I properly do so in a review, so I shall turn to the music on this disc. Almost all of the pieces on this disc can be described as programme music, insofar as their governing ideas are essentially extra-musical. In the Cello Concerto no. 1, for example, that idea is pilgrimage, understood as homage to musical predecessors. The work is in three movements (Allegro-Adagio-Ritmico), all of them based on Baroque / Classical music, though that music is seen / heard through a modern sensibility. I use the adjective ‘modern’ here not to indicate that Shor displays any specifically ‘modernist’ ideas, but simply to note that he is alive in the ‘modern world’. What actually happens is that a range of musical styles are put side-by-side in a carefully constructed pastiche, which is mildly pleasant but with little or no depth, for all that the playing of the soloist, cellist Alexander Chaussian and the chamber strings of the Kyiv Virtuosi is assured – though I was left with the feeling that both deserved better material to work with. The nearest to real originality is the third movement, in which, in a kind of reversed history, we get a classical take on the tango, something which also occurs in the last work on the disc, ‘Schubertango’.

The Violin Concerto No.3, ‘The Four Seasons of Manhatten’ is an addition tothe sequence of well-known classical pieces on the cycle of the seasons, such as Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, Tchaikovsky’s twelve piano pieces, The Seasons and Piazzola’s Las Cuatro Estaciones Porteñas. I can summon a little more enthusiasm for this work, whichcontains some interesting melodies, which are very well played by the violin soloist, Zia Hyunsu Shin. In ‘Phoenix – Fantasy for Violin and Orchestra, the role of violin soloist is taken by Dumitru Pocitari. This tone poem, for violin and string orchestra is the one work on the disc which I have been drawn to listen to several times. The myth of the phoenix has long fascinated me, which may well explain my relative enthusiasm for this composition. It mixes quietly contemplative passages with others of dazzling virtuosity. I hope – and believe – that it is not only my preexisting fascination with the myth of the phoenix, which features in Greek, Persian and Chinese mythological systems and has analogues in Tibetan and Hindu mythologies. The subject of Shor’s ‘Phoenix’ has, effectively, an archetypal power and this dimension seems to have stimulated and freed up the composer’s musical imagination – there is no ‘pastiche’ here. More than any other works by Alexey Shor that I have heard, this ‘Phoenix’ is, to a degree, engrossing and has rewarded several further hearings.

Of the three remaining works on the disc, ‘Crystal Palace – Frozen Garden Waltz’ is pleasant enough but without any real individuality; ‘Schubertango’ is an interesting attempt to fuse Schubertian melody with the rhythm of the tango – the author of the booklet notes, Julian Francalanza describes it as “a celebration of contrasts, with the refinement of Schubert’s classical melodies meeting the raw intensity of tango’s passion”. This is true enough as a description of the central idea of the work, but I cannot agree with Mr. Francalanza’s, further words “its daring and imaginative approach continues to linger deeply within the mind long after the last note has been played”, since my experience was that once the central idea had been recognised, it was not used in ways that were very rewarding or exciting.

As observed earlier, the performances throughout are all (and more) than the music deserves. But, given that only one out of the six works played here truly engaged my attention, I cannot encourage readers to investigate this disc.

Glyn Pursglove

Works and performers
Cello Concerto No.1 ‘Musical Pilgrimage’ (2018, arr. 2019)
Alexander Chaussian (cello), Kyiv Virtuosi / John Warner
Violin Concerto No.3 ‘The Four Seasons of Manhattan’ (2020, arr.2021)
Zia Hyunsu Shin (violin), Kyiv Virtuosi / Massimiliano Caldi
Phoenix – Fantasy for Violin and Orchestra (2021, arr. 2022)
Dumitru Pocitari (violin), Kyiv Virtuosi / Dmitry Yablonsky
Crystal Palace – ‘Frozen Garden Waltz’ (2017, arr. 2022)
Kristóf Baráti (violin), Kyiv Virtuosi / Dmitry Yablonsky
Saint Elmo Barcarolle (2015, arr. 2022)
Schubertango (2013, arr. 2022)
Kyiv Virtuosi / Dmitry Yablonsky

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