A Myaskovsky Clarinet Concerto?

[Alan Howe]

Labels that don't provide any information about the work/s recorded are next to useless.

[tuatara442442]

Just checked Myakovsky's archive official website. Again no candidate for the concerto, but possible candidates for little bird and napeve are in Flofion sketch books.
In part four there's a L'Oiseau in e minor: Poco andantino. The tempo is not wrong but key isn't right, as the recorded Little Bird is definitely in major. But there's no other possibility that I'm aware of.
"Napeve" means "melody" in Russian. so I found three candidates: Canzonina in F# Min: Andante in Pt II; Chant apocriphe in B-Flat Min: Andante in Pt III; Chant in E Min: Andante doloroso in Pt V. The tempo all fit, but not the key. The key in the ASV recording is apparently G Minor. I could imagine that the canzonina was transposed a semitone higher.

[tuatara442442]

In part four there's a L'Oiseau in e minor: Poco andantino. The tempo is not wrong but key isn't right, as the recorded Little Bird is definitely in major. But there's no other possibility that I'm aware of.

The melody of this miniature starts in E, but apparently hit the notes in a C major scale. Considering the chromaticism, a notation in e minor is possible I guess.

[Christopher]

"Napeve" means "melody" in Russian. so I found three candidates: Canzonina in F# Min: Andante in Pt II; Chant apocriphe in B-Flat Min: Andante in Pt III; Chant in E Min: Andante doloroso in Pt V. The tempo all fit, but not the key. The key in the ASV recording is apparently G Minor. I could imagine that the canzonina was transposed a semitone higher.

Napeve means more like "chant" in Russian and various other Slav languages.  I don't know if that makes a difference?

[tuatara442442]

Don't know either. The wiktionary list the translation "tune, melody", the google translation's primary translation is "chant". Do you mean chant as in Gregorian chant? I'm almost purely instrumental guy and don't react to vocal music terms well, so chant is more often a French word for me. Maybe it's a good idea to ask our Russian Pianist friend Servin

[Christopher]

A Russian friend of mine says napevy is a word that has connotation of folk/gypsy/rustic music. He also confirmed my suspicions that the Russian word is napev or napevy (plural) not napeve, which looks more like another Slav language.

[tuatara442442]

A Russian friend of mine says napevy is a word that has connotation of folk/gypsy/rustic music. He also confirmed my suspicions that the Russian word is napev or napevy (plural) not napeve, which looks more like another Slav language.

Well, I checked again. Напеве is really a singular prepositional case declension... Wiktionary doesn't list another language in that page, and its Latinized version didn't yield results.  Maybe the transliteration is not good enough...

[Holger]

The Clarinet Concerto is definitely a misattribution, it is far away from anything in Myaskovsky's output. The question by whom it might be is really difficult to answer and I am afraid that even Onno's site might not really help since it only represents the tip of the iceberg. There were hundreds if not thousands of Soviet composers, and it might be by anyone. Just to point out one name, the Russian wikipedia article on Vladimir Sokolov tells us that David Krivitsky (1937–2010) wrote a clarinet concerto for Sokolov. However, checking whether it might be this piece seems to be impossible.

[tuatara442442]

Your suggestion is somewhat close. That Concerto for bass clar. & str. is estimated to be 17 mins long, precisely the length of the recording. However, the instrument in that recording is a usual clarinet since the timbre and the range.
Or it could be arranged and transposed, that opens an infinite possibilities...
Oh, I just noticed, the Krivitsky Concerto played by him is his "arrangement", it is entirely possible we find the true target!

[eschiss1]

does it even sound like a production of the Soviet era? has hints of Hindemith-like composers about it, I think.

[Alan Howe]

Difficult to say, Eric. Hindemith was, after all, widely influential, although disapproved of under the Nazis. Not so sure about the Soviet Union, although it seems unlikely, I agree. Who knows, though, whether the piece was written and simply suppressed?

[Holger]

It very much depends on which time we talk about. During Stalinism, pressure was most intense (and if we were sure it's a concerto from 1950 I would say a Soviet author should be as good as impossible), while in later years, the variety of styles among Soviet composers is actually large (much larger than commonly assumed), so that I don't really think we can exclude a Soviet composer for reasons of style. To see that a Hindemithian approach was certainly no risk, just keep in mind how many Soviet composers tried dodecaphony (so, even more modernist tendencies) in the 1960s. This said, of course there is also some possibility it's not a work by a Soviet composer, that's correct of course. For instance, I have a Melodiya LP from ca. 1980 with pieces for clarinet and piano by Martinů, Glazachev (Ukraine), Poulenc and Podkovyrov (Belarus), indicating that stuff from abroad was also played (of course).

[tuatara442442]

Anyway, I sampled Krivitsky's Viola d'amore concerto (1982) and other compositions that I can't find a date. The style is a bit more advanced than that in this recording (his bass-clar. concerto was written in 1980). So I'm not sure if this is the composer.

[eschiss1]

Actually, the part I've heard of the concerto seems _less_, not more, "modern" than many works by Myaskovsky and other Soviets, and also somehow less "national" somehow. "Hindemithian" was probably not what I was looking for, there.

[tuatara442442]

While the real composer can't be determined, I find the music itself somewhat worth a listen. While the Mov. I is your average slightly dissonant neoclassical stuff, the Mov II is attractive enough, and the Mov III contains an interesting jazzy episode.