Hideko Udagawa/RPO
Khachaturian/Lyapunov concertos
(Signum Classics)
THIS is a curio. Aram Khachaturian is best-known for the big, sweeping themes in his ballets Gayaneh and Spartacus and for his splendid Piano Concerto, somewhat underplayed these days. He is pretty much completely unknown, however, for a series of large-scale, single-movement, hybrid pieces that he called Concerto-Rhapsodies. There are three of them, and this new recording, with violinist Hideko Udagawa, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and Alan Burybayev conducting, features the 23-minute Concerto-Rhapsody for violin and orchestra. The sizzling playing of Udagawa, which gets a bit fierce and harsh at times, doesn't altogether disguise the fact that the concerto-rhapsody, as a form, is really neither one thing nor the other. It's extremely ornamental and virtuosic music, but you keep waiting for one of the big characteristic themes to well-up – and it doesn't happen. The composer's Sonata-Monologue for solo violin is more interesting, but the plum on the disc is Sergei Lyapunov's warm, richly romantic Violin Concerto: little-known, but worth hearing.
Michael Tumelty
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article