Roslavets - Piano Trio No. 4- II "Allegro vivace"

Second movement from the Fourth Piano Trio (1927)

Among Roslavets' vast compositional output is a hefty corpus of high-quality chamber works, which Jonathan Powell believes to be "the single most impressive contribution to chamber music by an early 20th-century Russian composer." Indeed, I infinitely prefer Roslavets' powerful and angst-ridden chamber compositions to those of any other Soviet composer.

Nikolai Roslavets (1881-1944) is sometimes called the "Russian Schoenberg" and was certainly the first Russian composer to use a system of tone organization similar to Schoenberg's serialism. Before the 1917 revolution, Roslavets was regarded as a cutting-edge composer comparable to Scriabin. Interestingly, Marc-Andre Hamelin describes Roslavets's music as "Scriabin on acid." After the revolution and the formation of the RAPM (Russian Association of Proletarian Musicians), Roslavets was criticized and harrassed for his modernism. In the late 1920s, he left the Communist Party and in 1931 moved to Tashkent. There he conducted for a music theater and composed simple pieces in accordance with Socialist Realism. He died in obscurity and his name and music was mostly forgotten until the 1970s.

Artwork by Alfred Kubin: (1) "The Man" (2) "Madness"

Category:

Music

Tags:

• roslavets
• scriabin
• feinberg
• mosolov
• shostakovich
• prokofiev

[Kalen1457]

This piece has become my new obsession.

[Kalen1457]

So rhythmic! I especially like the cool effect the pizzicato does.

[Lukecash12]

Incredible. Distinct and sentimental art. I wouldn't use the words "aesthetically pleasing", because that would be a very superficial sentiment; I would rather say that you can really see the person behind this.