{"id":440,"date":"2016-01-13T16:05:11","date_gmt":"2016-01-13T22:05:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jameselkins.com\/pianofiles\/?page_id=440"},"modified":"2016-01-13T16:05:55","modified_gmt":"2016-01-13T22:05:55","slug":"valery-zhelobinsky-six-short-etudes-1933","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"http:\/\/www.jameselkins.com\/pianofiles\/valery-zhelobinsky-six-short-etudes-1933\/","title":{"rendered":"Valery Zhelobinsky, \u201cSix Short Etudes\u201d (1933)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"PTDC0001\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Valarie Jelobinsky (Valery Zhelobinsky,\u00a0B\u0430\u043b\u0435\u0440\u0438\u0439 \u0416\u0435\u043b\u043e\u0431\u0438\u043d\u0441\u043a\u0438\u0439) is a forgotten Russian composer of the first half of the 20th century. There’s a brief Wikipedia entry on him, noting he died young (his dates are 1913-1946), and that he was praised by Shostakovich. the Six Short Etudes<\/em>, composed in 1933, were made famous by Horowitz and played by Oscar Levant, but as of 2014 there was\u00a0only one recording of the first one, Toccata<\/em>, on YouTube or iTunes. (It would be good to know how Horowitz found the pieces, and whether he and Levant played only the virtuoso pieces\u00a0nos. 1, 3, and 5.) Zhelobinsky is fairly thoroughly forgotten: the site IMSLP\u00a0has only the\u00a0Twenty Etudes<\/em>\u00a0(1934), which I will post on separately.<\/p>\n

The Toccata<\/em> is en empty showpiece, but each of the slower etudes,\u00a0nos. 2, 4, and 6,\u00a0has an interesting character.\u00a0There is a lovely Nocturne<\/em>, no. 2, which involves some stretching in the left hand. It may owe something to Bart\u00f3k’s\u00a0Sonata<\/em>\u00a0(1926) or even to Cyril Scott’s\u00a0Cavatina<\/em> (1914), but it is tempered by neoclassicism. (incidentally, the quirky hand-lettered fingerings are typical of the period: click through to\u00a0the high-resolution scan.)<\/p>\n

\"PTDC0002\"<\/a>No. 4, Reminiscence<\/em>, is a Chopinesque piece that also owes something to Stravinsky’s\u00a0Serenade<\/em> (1925):<\/p>\n

\"PTDC0003\"<\/a>And the set ends with a very neoclassical Recitative<\/em> in intermittently polyphonic running sixteenth notes:<\/p>\n

\"PTDC0004\"<\/a>It would be good to know more about Zhelobinsky, and to have\u00a0a better sense of the range and limits of his neoclassicism.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Valarie Jelobinsky (Valery Zhelobinsky,\u00a0B\u0430\u043b\u0435\u0440\u0438\u0439 \u0416\u0435\u043b\u043e\u0431\u0438\u043d\u0441\u043a\u0438\u0439) is a forgotten Russian composer of the first half of the 20th century. There’s a …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jameselkins.com\/pianofiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/440"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jameselkins.com\/pianofiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jameselkins.com\/pianofiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jameselkins.com\/pianofiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jameselkins.com\/pianofiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=440"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.jameselkins.com\/pianofiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/440\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":442,"href":"http:\/\/www.jameselkins.com\/pianofiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/440\/revisions\/442"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jameselkins.com\/pianofiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=440"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}