Eight Pieces for violin and cello, Op.39

Cradle Song: tranquillo

Canzonetta: moderato

Intermezzo: andantino

Impromptu: poco animato

Scherzo: vivace - tranquillo - vivace

Finale: allegro molto

Though born only 16 years before Prokofiev - and although he also outlived him - Glière really belonged to an earlier generation of Russian composers. His musical language and personality were formed long before the Revolution and, as an unquestioning inheritor of the romantic tradition, he had no difficulty in accepting the official Soviet aesthetic when the time came to conform. Indeed, he wrote the first socialist-realist ballet, The Red Poppy, in 1926 and became Chairman of the Committee of the USSR Composers’ Union in 1939.

As a yohng man he had been Prokofiev’s tutor for a while but by 1909, when Glière wrote the Eight Pieces, Op.39, his pupile was rapidly developing ahead of him. Certainly, their respective works for two string instruments could scarcely be more different. Far from making counterpoint the basis of an equal relationship between the two, Glière preferred to award the melody to the one and a simple harmonic accompaniment to the other. Although the cello all but monopolises the wistful melodic interest of the Prelude of the Eight Pieces, the roles are reversed in the Gavotte, the cello being reduced to a mere drone to the violin’s imitation bagpipes in the the Musette middle section. The cello accompanies the violin melody with the same broken-chord figuration throughout the prettily sentimental Canzonetta and the gentle playfulness of the Intermezzo. It is, however, the first to give voice to the anxiety of the Impromptu and, in both the Vivace outer section and the Tranquillo middle, the melodic favours of the Scherzo are equally shared. Both instruments are execeptionally busy in the brilliant and witty finale.

Glière himself - it is not surprising to learn - was a violinist.