Presents
Dmytro Klebanov
String Quartet No.5
First Time Available in the West
We are pleased to present the fifth string quartet by the Ukrainian master composer Dmytro Klebanov (1907-1987 Dmitri is the Russian form of the Ukrainian name Dmytro). He was born in the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv (then known as Kharkov and part of the Russian empire). He studied piano, viola and composition at the Kharkiv Music and Drama Institute. After briefly playing viola in the Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra, he returned to Kharkiv where he pursued a career as a composer, conductor and teacher, eventually becoming a professor at the Kharkiv Conservatory in 1960. His first symphony, composed in 1945 and titled "In Memoriam to the Martyrs of Babi Yar" was attacked by Stalinist music critics who found it anti-patriotic. He was accused of distortion of the historic truth about the Soviet people and of national narrow-mindedness. Shortly thereafter, Stalin made his famous attack on Soviet artists with the result that Soviet Composers were forced to compose politically correct works of "socialist realism."
Klebanov’s String Quartet No.5 was composed in 1966 by which time the Stalinist threats of the 1940s and early 1950s had subsided. The Union of Soviet Composers still exercised its power, and avant-garde experiments were still condemned, but offending composers were now simply ignored and marginalised, rather than punished and persecuted. Shostakovich was the country’s most celebrated composer and was an example of the greater latitude composers were then being allowed. Klebanov’s Fifth Quartet is an example of this more relaxed policy. The ideas remain fresh and vigorous, but there are now confident excursions into dissonance and bitonality. The opening motif of the first movement, Allegro moderato, is the source of much of the quartet’s thematic material. The music combines a sense of yearning within a veil of mystery. At times, it is stormy, frantic and full of nervous energy and playful and almost light-hearted. The middle movement, Andante, begins with a lengthy somewhat spooky pizzicato introduction. The main part of the movement is dark and sad although not quite funereal. The finale, Vivace, energetically bursts out of the starting gating with its persistent dotted rhythm creating a sense of constant movement and unrest
This is a master quartet. We warmly recommend and encourage professional groups to offer this highly original and convincing work. We wish to thank Stefan Hlouschko who made a copy of the score available to us.
Parts: $29.95
Parts & Score $39.95
