Vasily Andreyevich Zolotarev 1873-1964

[dhibbard]

Now that the copyright has expired and the orchestra score is in public domain, I'm looking forward to a recording of the Symphony no 1 published in 1903. 
Hopefully, it already has been recorded and we are just waiting for the release??!?

[eschiss1]

btw it's only in public domain in the US and Canada actually - not in the EU for another 20 years...

[dhibbard]

guess then it won't be available in the UK and the EU !

[eschiss1]

Well, the score isn't. That usually doesn't affect the availability of recordings, I think... copyright law is complicated, else why copyright lawyers...

[sdtom]

I wonder if this will be a Naxos project

[dhibbard]

It's possible.  Naxos is one of few companies that can make it available via internet in their "iTunes" store and then limit it by country.   I can think of a few recordings in their "archive" series that are unavailable to US listeners.

[dhibbard]

I know these symphonies are the hidden gems of the Russian/ Soviet music.   As you know, Vasili was a student of Rimsky-Korsakov, and friend of Glazunov.

[dhibbard]

I am now in possession of his Symphonies 1, 2 and 3 scores.   Symphony No 1 was published by Belaieff, no 2 and 3 in Leningrad.

[Alan Howe]

Can you give us any more details, please?

[eschiss1]

No.1 (Op.8) in F-sharp minor (published 1903) I know a bit about because it's out of copyright in the US and Canada (though not in the EU) and the full score is available for download (in those areas) @ IMSLP. I know nothing about nos. 2 and 3 though, not their dates of composition or publication, keys, or anything else. (The spiccato scherzo looks neat...)

[dhibbard]

Symphony 2 "The Year 1905"   (1929)  and Symphony no 3 ("The Flowers of Chelioskine") (1934).   Soviet Compositor - Leningrad.   
Symphony no 1 ("In memory of Tchaikovsky") 1903   M.P Belaieff   Moscow and Leipzig.    These are full orchestra scores. 

[eschiss1]

That's not so much an unusual title as the dedication (of no.1) (p.2: "A la mémoire de P. Tschaïkowsky. Première symphonie pour orchestre ...")

[dhibbard]

Symphony no 3 was in memory of :  (wiki)

SS Chelyuskin[3] (Russian: «Челю́скин»; IPA: [tɕɪˈlʲuskʲɪn]) was a Soviet steamship reinforced to navigate through polar ice that became ice-bound in Arctic waters during navigation along the Northern Maritime Route from Murmansk to Vladivostok. The expedition's task was to determine the possibility to travel by non-icebreaker through the Northern Maritime Route in a single navigation season.

It was built in Denmark in 1933 by Burmeister and Wain (B&W, Copenhagen) and named after the 18th century Russian polar explorer Semion Ivanovich Chelyuskin. The head of the expedition was Otto Yuliyevich Shmidt and the ship's captain was V. I. Voronin. There were 111 people on board the steamship. The crew members were known as Chelyuskintsy, "Chelyuskinites".


After leaving Murmansk on August 2, 1933, the steamship managed to get through most of the Northern Route before it was caught in the ice fields in September. After that it drifted in the ice pack before sinking on February 13, 1934, crushed by the icepacks near Kolyuchin Island in the Chukchi Sea. The crew managed to escape onto the ice and built a makeshift airstrip using only a few spades, ice shovels and two crowbars. They had to rebuild the airstrip thirteen times, until they were rescued in April of the same year and flown to the village of Vankarem on the coast of the sea. From there, some of the Chelyuskinites were flown further to the village of Uelen, while fifty-three men walked over 300 miles to get there.

The aircraft pilots who took part in search and rescue operations were the first people to receive the newly established highest title of Hero of the Soviet Union. Those pilots were Anatoly Liapidevsky, Sigizmund Levanevsky (who crashed en route to the camp, but survived), Vasily Molokov, Mavriky Slepnyov, Mikhail Vodopianov, Nikolai Kamanin and Ivan Doronin. Liapidevsky flew an ANT-4, the civilian version of the TB-1 heavy bomber, while Slepnev and Levanevsky flew a Consolidated Fleetster specially brought in from the US for the mission, and the other pilots flew the Polikarpov R-5. Two American air mechanics, Clyde Goodwin Armitstead, and William Latimer Lavery,[4] also helped in the search and rescue of the Chelyuskintsy, on September 10, 1934, and were awarded the Order of Lenin.

As the steamship became trapped at the entrance to the Bering Strait, the USSR considered the expedition mainly successful, as it had proven that a regular steamship had a chance to navigate the whole Northern Maritime Route in a single season. After a few additional trial runs in 1933 and 1934, the Northern Sea Route was officially opened and commercial exploitation began in 1935. Next year, part of the Soviet Baltic Fleet made the passage to the Pacific where an armed conflict with Japan was looming.Legacy

In the wake of the catastrophe, a central square in Yaroslavl was renamed after the Chelyuskintsy, as was Chelyuskinites Park in Minsk. Marina Tsvetayeva wrote a poem applauding the rescue team. In 1970, East German television produced Tscheljuskin, a film about the ship's voyage, directed by Rainer Hausdorf and featuring Eberhard Mellies as Prof. Schmidt, Dieter Mann as the surveyor Vasiliev and Fritz Diez as Valerian Kuybyshev.[5]

Efforts to find the wreck of the ship were made by at least four different expeditions, and it was finally discovered in September 2006, at a depth of about 50 metres in the Chukchi Sea.[6] The polar explorer Artur Chilingarov argued that the ship should be raised and converted into a museum.

Michael Roberts, an English poet, wrote a poem "Chelyuskin", which was included in his collection Poems, published by Jonathan Cape in 1936.

[eschiss1]

*nod* If anyone ever programs Myaskovsky's 16th symphony again in a live concert, the 2 could go together thematically at least.

[Alan Howe]

Thanks for the info.