A true citizen of the world, Alexander Tcherepnin was exposed to many influences, including the Russian Romantics, Stravinsky and the French Impressionists, Chinese and Asian music, the Second Viennese School, and just about everything else he encountered in his perennial global perambulations. And yet his music sounds like no one else, exactly. Take the First Symphony: it opens in a rhythmically vigorous and harmonically acerbic style evocative of Honegger and Roussel; but then the second movement is a remarkable creation scored for unpitched percussion only! Needless to say, the work created a juicy scandal at its Paris premiere. The problem with polystylistic music such as this is the danger of it sounding like bits of odds and ends, rather than an integrated work of art. Tcherepnin avoids this by never overplaying his hand (his various harmonic modes color rather than overwhelm his individuality), keeping the music moving, and structuring his works with surprising rigor. These generally excellent recordings, in which the Singapore Symphony Orchestra rises valiantly to the music’s challenges, offer a very positive take on some first rate music. Pianist Noriko Ogawa plays with fluency and accuracy, though a touch more bravura wouldn’t have been amiss in the Fifth Piano Concerto. In sum: get in at the start of another important and rewarding series of recordings from BIS dedicated to neglected but very worthy music.
