Pianophilia

Il’ya Aleksandrovich Sats. Born 1875, Chernobyl: died 1912, Moscow. Attended the Moscow Conservatoire from 1897-199, where he studied cello, and composition with Taneyev. Owing to political repressions, he left Moscow to teach in Irkutsk (1900-03). He later returned to Moscow to study conducting at the Music-Dramatic School of the Moscow Philharmonic Society.
In 1905 he became music director of the Moscow Arts Theatre, for which he wrote incidental music to a number of plays including Andreyev’s ‘A Man’s Life’ and Maeterlinck’s ‘Blue Bird”. He also composed works in an avant-garde style. His daughter was the inspiration behind Prokofiev’s musical tale ‘Peter & the Wolf’.

Sats wrote very littlefor the piano – most are arrangements of pieces from the incidental music he wrote to plays. I have posted one of these – the Waltz from Yushkevich’s “Miserere”.
Malcolm

PS. Sats died suddenly aged just 37 years, whilst writing the music for his oratorio "Death" !!

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Dear Friends,

I've recently acquired a series of works by 19th century Russian composer A. Balabanov. A quick search through Wikipedia gave no information on the composer. This is rare material dating from the 1870s - 1880s, and while in a light salon vein these pieces certainly haven't been heard for more than a century.

I am extremely indebted to our wonderful Russian Mentor, Malcolm, for kindly translating all the title and composer name information on these pieces!!

Thanks, Malc!

Enjoy all!

Frank

...continuing on Balabanov....

Hello everyone,

I've seen that in some site the Op.43 of F. Blumenfeld is signed like "piano solo" work.
For example:
-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_co ... Blumenfeld
-http://www.klassika.info/Komponisten/Bl ... ttung.html

In the Malcolm encyclopedia isn't present, then should be not a piano solo work; IMSLP is prudent, write only "Dwie pieśni (after Mickiewicz)"

I wanna be sure that Op.43 is a song, but the score to ensure this is extremely rare......

Anybody can say that Op.43 is surely a song? Is a mistake what is written on Wiki etc.?


Thanks for the help.

Duirton wrote:Hello everyone,

I've seen that in some site the Op.43 of F. Blumenfeld is signed like "piano solo" work.
For example:
-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_co ... Blumenfeld
-http://www.klassika.info/Komponisten/Bl ... ttung.html

In the Malcolm encyclopedia isn't present, then should be not a piano solo work; IMSLP is prudent, write only "Dwie pieśni (after Mickiewicz)"

I wanna be sure that Op.43 is a song, but the score to ensure this is extremely rare......

Anybody can say that Op.43 is surely a song? Is a mistake what is written on Wiki etc.?

Thanks for the help.

Duirton

I can confirm that Op 43 by Blumenfeld is definitely Two Songs [words by Adam Mickiewicz] for voice and piano [words in Polish and Russian]. Published by Belaieff in 1912. I can only suggest that either the two sites you have mentioned have made an error [which I think is more likely], or that someone else has made a piano transcription of one or both of these songs [although I have never come any record of these transcriptions if they do exist, and definitely not by Blumenfeld].

Malcolm

Hi Folks,

Here are two works by Sigismond M. Blumenfeld, (vital dates 1852-1920, courtesy of Malcolm's Russian Encyclopaedia). I could find no biographical details on the composer, although undoubtedly a relative of Felix Blumenfeld. These are excellent mazurkas and rare Belaieff publications. Enjoy!

Frank