After the death of Alban Berg the young Benjamin Britten wrote ruefully in his diary that there were very few ‘real composers’ left. He listed Stravinsky, Schoenberg and his own teacher Frank Bridge, and then wondered whether two younger men might not soon join their select number: Shostakovich and Igor Markevitch. He was not alone in rating Markevitch highly: Bartok gratefully acknowledged his influence, Milhaud and Stravinsky admired him, the respected critic Henri Prunieres called him a genius. For about a decade (from 1929 to the outbreak of the Second World War) Markevitch’s music was widely performed and enthusiastically received. Then, still only in his late twenties, he abandoned composition, for reasons that are still hard to understand, and began to forge a new career as a distinguished conductor. Towards the end of his life (he died in 1983) he allowed his works to be performed and published again, but although several have attracted widespread acclaim none has been recorded until now (save L’envol d’Icare, which Markevitch himself recorded in 1938 on HMV).
You would expect a composer, all of whose works are youthful, to betray influences. The Sinfonietta (his first acknowledged work, written when he was 16) and the Concerto grosso both owe a debt to Hindemith; Nadia Boulanger had introduced Markevitch to the German composer’s Concerto for Orchestra, and for a while he kept the score under his pillow. But throughout both works you get a distinct impression that this is an already mature composer finding confirmation in Hindemith of certain features that are already aspects of his own style: motoric rhythm and sinewy counterpoint, for example. There is also an obvious kinship at times with Prokofiev; often enough, though, the resemblance is to works that Prokofiev hadn’t written yet. And although Markevitch had a deep interest in complex rhythm, his avoidance of the influence of Stravinsky is notable. Again, in the Cinema Ouverture, one might ascribe the use of whistles and car-horns to the influence of Satie, but Markevitch uses them quite differently and very strikingly, as part of a highly original exercise in polyrhythm.
Apart from his individuality – it doesn’t take long, listening to this pair of CDs, to recognize a strong personal voice – the most impressive thing about Markevitch is the absolute certainty of his ear. L’envol d’Icare (“The Flight of Icarus”) does two things that had hardly been attempted before, and does them with astonishing assurance. Firstly the sound world of the piece is defined by the presence within the orchestra of a small solo group playing in quarter-tones. The effect is not in the least outre; it is precisely imagined to produce harmonies of shimmering radiance. Rhythmic energy, evident in nearly all these pieces, is here used with great skill, to give an impression first of hovering flight, then of exhilarating but ultimately catastrophic velocity. The final section of the work, “The death of Icarus”, will strike many listeners as a prediction of minimalism; in fact its repetitive moto perpetuo is subject to constant rhythmic change, and there is a strange magic to the gradual suggestion that Icarus has been reborn after his destruction. Strangely impressive, too, is the way that bird-like melodies and elaborate polyrhythmic patterns, juxtaposed in the third movement (“Icarus catches two doves and studies their flight”), give a genuine impression of the mechanics and the poetry of flight being simultaneously discovered.
Le nouvel age (“The new age”), a strong, bold, ultimately rather disconcertingly machine-like three-movement symphony quarried from an abortive opera, suggests that though Markevitch left Russia at the age of two, he was well aware of the ‘constructivist’ aesthetic promoted there. The Cantique d’amour, on the other hand, reminds us that his language was French: it is luxuriant in colour and texture and rises to a full and impassioned climax. But its coda, a low pounding with static, luminous chords from string harmonics, celeste and glockenspiel, is already recognizable as archetypal Markevitch.
He is an uncommonly fascinating composer, in short, at times an inspired one, and a major rediscovery. For all his formidable skill (the Concerto grosso is quite dazzlingly inventive in its welding of three movements into a through-composed whole) his music is vividly communicative and approachable. It is fortunate that Markevitch should have found such a convinced and convincing exponent as Christopher Lyndon-Gee, who draws performances of high quality from the excellent Arnhem Philharmonic. Decent recordings, too: strongly recommended.'