ROSLAVETS Morgenstimmung. Reverie. Élégie. 3 Poems. 3 Dances. Poème romantique. Nocturne . Legend. Preludes: No. 4 in e; No. 9 in E; No. 11 in B; No. 12 in g♯; No. 17 in A♭; No. 20 in c; No. 24 in d • Carolyn Stuart (vn); Svetozar Ivanov (pn) • GEGA 340 (55:17)

Nikolai Roslavets (1881–1944) had the supreme misfortune, like so many others, to live during the nightmares of the Soviet system. His music is oddly schizophrenic stylistically. Early on, with the creation of his Three Dances for violin and piano, his career endured tremendous humiliation, but some of his music later on becomes almost salon-like in its simplicity, though this would in no way assuage the wrath of the troglodyte authorities that had descended upon him.

But it is also these same Three Dances that were performed more than any other composition of his during his lifetime. Today they seem tame in comparison to the other things that appeared in the world slightly before and definitely after Roslavets’s era. Roslavets was interested in sound construction in the same way that Scriabin was with his “mystic chord”—an augmented fourth, diminished fourth, augmented fourth, and two perfect fourths as the basic idea. The composer called his a “synthetic chord” based on a collection of six to nine pitches that made it possible to use all 12 tones of the chromatic scale, making it approach the world of Schoenberg, though I’ll wager that no one listening to this music will make that association. The Roslavets idiom, at least as we hear it today, remains remarkably subdued, and one is hard-pressed to ascribe revolutionary tactics to his music.

The other pieces on this disc, in the individual compositions, alternate between the Scriabinesque Three Poems and the world of the parlor. I do think that we could have had many more of the 24 Preludes than the seven given here—there was plenty of room, and as it is the last offspring of the Roslavets muse to be given birth it must be regarded as fairly important music. He seems to find a happy medium between his instinctive lyrical propensities and the desire to open the world of sound possibilities, creating a cycle of 24 pieces that traverse all 24 keys.

Carolyn Stuart and Svetozar Ivanov provide all of the expertise one can ask for in their performances of these works. I will not for one second claim that this is an essential disc, as I am undecided myself as to how essential Roslavets is to my own musical existence. But those wanting to expand their horizons will not be disappointed in this music, and might even find themselves learning to like—if not love—it. Steven E. Ritter