ALEXANDER KNAIFEL Lukomoriye

The fourth New Series album from Russian composer Alexander Knaifel may be his most wide-ranging to date, voyaging from the sacred to the secular and back again via several inspired detours. It includes two Prayers to the Holy Spirit, movingly performed by the Lege Artis Choir. The composer’s wife, Tatiana Melentieva, sings Bliss, based on Alexander Pushkin’s poem, and the great Russian poet is cross-referenced with St Ephraim the Syrian in O Lord of All My Life (A Poem and a Prayer) sung by Piotr Migunov. Oleg Malov, one of Alexander Knaifel’s closest associates for more than thirty years, accompanies both singers and is called upon to internalize texts - playing as if singing, a Knaifel speciality - in four further solo piano pieces. A mad tea party lives up to its title, with a surreal Alice in Wonderland spirit. This Child (after the Gospel of St Luke), A Confession and title piece Lukomoriye (both after Pushkin) are luminously quiet, and quietly magical. The scope of the musical material – by turns playful, devotional, lyrical – defies typecasting, just as it testifies to Kanifel’s eclectic imagination. “The music comes from up there,” Knaifel has said, pointing skyward, “what’s important for a composer is to listen to it, and get it down on paper.”

Alexander Knaifel was born in 1943 in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, but grew up in St. Petersburg. His music, described by the Frankfurter Rundschau as "one of the most important revelations of recent years", belongs to that circle of near-contemporaries and associates from the former Soviet lands which includes Arvo Pärt, Giya Kancheli, Tigran Mansurian, Valentin Silvestrov and Sofia Gubaidulina. But, although critics have found echoes of Pärt, Tavener and Górecki in Knaifel’s quest for musical beauty, he has an idiom that is entirely his own, with its own expressive power.

ECM’s documentation of Knaifel’s work began with Svete Tikhiy (recorded 1997 and 2000), with the Keller Quartet, pianist Oleg Malov, and Tatiana Melentieva. Amicta Sole, recorded 2000 to 2001, featured the great Mstislav Rostropovich, who had been Knaifel’s cello teacher at the Moscow Conserbatory; Rostropovich was subsequently the dedicatee of the 2006 recording Blazhenstva, which also featured The Lege Artis Choir. (ECM Records)

ALEXANDER KNAIFEL Blazhenstva

The third ECM album pioneering Alexander Knaifel’s highly personal œuvre after “Amicta Sole” and “Svete Tikhiy” (released in 2003 and 2005, respectively) offers an important addition to the label's wide-ranging spectrum of Post-Soviet music. Two starkly contrasting yet spiritually interrelated compositions – both of them, according to Knaifel, following the same path and forming a "united way" – are presented in exemplary interpretations from some of his long-standing collaborators, especially from cellist and conductor Ivan Monighetti. "In my opinion this recording is one of the best ones we ever did", says the composer who took part in all production stages.

While the heavy chords in “Lamento” for solo cello tend to evoke an almost orchestral density of sound, the subtle sonic hues of “Blazhenstva” for soloists, orchestra and choir often verge to silence. The 18-minute cello piece, a central example of Knaifel’s expressive early style, depicts an impressive development from vehement rage to almost transcendent tranquillity. Towards the end, the (male) player is asked to sing with closed mouth in the cello register. “Lamento” was written in 1967 when the composer, originally a cellist himself, was still studying in Leningrad. It was revised twenty years later and dedicated to the memory of the influential Russian choreographer Leonid Jakobson who had died in 1975.

“Blazhenstva” was composed in 1996 and is dedicated to Mstislav Rostropovich, Knaifel’s former teacher and mentor. Representative of Knaifel’s mature style it is a very sparse and completely quiet score of 37 minutes in slow tempo throughout. Relinquishing all ornamental elements it creates an incomparable sonic space of almost narcotic intensity. The biblical verse from the Sermon on the Mount (Gospel of St. Matthew) in Russian language are set for solo voices and different choral groups and enhanced by extensive string interludes. “Feasible comprehension of these immeasurable words seemed to me the best gift to the 70th anniversary of the great musician and great person Mstislav Rostropovich”, writes Knaifel in a short note for this recording. (ECM Records)