Duo for violin and cello Op.49

Allegro

Maestoso - allegretto -maestoso

Moderato

Allegro

Allegro moderato

Alexander Tcherepnin has a complex musical background. It was based, inevitably, on what he inherited from his father, Nicolas Tcherepnin - himself a composer and pupil of Rimsky-Korsakov - but another formative influence was Prokofiev who, as a regular visitor to the Tcherepnin household during his student days in St Petersburg, became something of a role model for Alexander. A different but no less deep impression on him was made by the folk music of Georgia, where the family settled for a few years after Nicolas Tcherepnin was appointed director of the Tbilisi conservatoire in 1918.

The Georgian influence did not come to the surface in his music until the early 1930s. In the meantime the family had moved again, this time to Paris, where Alexander proved himself as capable of shocking the bourgoisie as Prokofiev himself. At about the same time as Prokofiev returned to Russia, Tcherepnin also turned back - not to the country itself, however, but to its folk music and, in particular, what he called its “Eurasian” quality, its mixture of Eastern and Western elements.

The Duo for violin and cello, which was written in 1932 (two years before Tcherepnin left Europe for China), is one of the most interesting works of this period. It is clear from the folk-style fiddle writing and the constantly changing metres of the first movement that Stravinsky’s Soldier’s Tale had been an influence too, as the parlando melodic material of the Maestoso sections and the percussive rhythms of the central Allegretto episode of the second movement seem to indicate. The Moderato third movement is Russian exoticism in the traditionally voluptuous manner, the Allegro fourth movement a far more sophisticated study in rhythm than its primitive colouring might suggest, and the closing Allegro moderato a brilliant example of Tcherepnin’s subtlety in variation technique.