Alexei Stanchinsky

[semloh]

Prompted by the beauty of his piano music, I was just reading up on Alexei Stanchinsky, whose life was a reminder of the terrible consequences of mental illness. I wonder if anyone knows of (or has) a performance/recording of his Sextet or String Trio. The survival of his music seems miraculous, and I have been unable to discover whether they were unfinished or lost, or if they are just neglected. 

[Alan Howe]

There's more about him here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexei_Stanchinsky
This link...
http://home.wanadoo.nl/ovar/stanchinsky.htm
...tells us that his String Trio was performed in 1966, but gives no further details.

[Christopher]

And here - http://english.ruvr.ru/radio_broadcast/2249227/2485420.html -   This is an internet radio station called Voice of Russia, it has programmes about many cultural figures in Russia, composers and other.  Click on the play symbol for a 20-minute programme (in English) about Stanchinsky, including some of his music.

[Lionel Harrsion]

Thanks, Christopher, for the link to that radio programme.  On the basis of the extracts of his piano music therein, I can quite understand why the pedagogues of the Moscow Conservatory were all agog when they heard him.  He's clearly a first cousin of Scriabin and am I alone in detecting a similarity with Catoire in the concentrated, distilled nature of his inspiration?  I see some of the piano music is available on CD but, as a chamber music junkie, I'd really like to hear the string trio and the sextet.  Does anyone know the instrumentation of the latter?

[X. Trapnel]

There is an interesting chapter on Stanchinsky in Leonid Sabanyeev's Modern Russian Composers, but I'm afraid it's more heat than light as far as specifics. Sabaneev's own chamber music is intense, visionary stuff.