Airat Ichmouratov's Octet in

G minor G minor is a minor scale based on G, consisting of the pitches G, A, B, C, D, E, and F. Its key signature has two flats. Its relative major is B-flat major and its parallel major is G major. The G natural minor scale is: Changes n ...

, Op. 56, was composed in December 2017. It was commissioned and premiered by Saguenay and Lafayette String Quartets on 13 January 2018 at Fanny Bay Hall, Fanny Bay,

British Columbia British Columbia is the westernmost Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Canada. Situated in the Pacific Northwest between the Pacific Ocean and the Rocky Mountains, the province has a diverse geography, with rugged landscapes that ...

, Canada. The Octet was inspired by

Stefan Zweig Stefan Zweig ( ; ; 28 November 1881 – 22 February 1942) was an Austrian writer. At the height of his literary career, in the 1920s and 1930s, he was one of the most widely translated and popular writers in the world. Zweig was raised in V ...

novella A novella is a narrative prose fiction whose length is shorter than most novels, but longer than most novelettes and short stories. The English word ''novella'' derives from the Italian meaning a short story related to true (or apparently so) ...

" Letter from an Unknown Woman" and bears the same name. In November 2018 composer made an arrangement of the Octet for string orchestra and it was recorded by Belarusian State Chamber Orchestra with Evgeny Bushkov as a conductor and was released by Chandos Records. The string orchestra version was first time publicly performed by the Belarusian State Chamber Orchestra with Evgeny Bushkov as a conductor on March 13, 2019 in

Minsk Minsk (, ; , ) is the capital and largest city of Belarus, located on the Svislach (Berezina), Svislach and the now subterranean Nyamiha, Niamiha rivers. As the capital, Minsk has a special administrative status in Belarus and is the administra ...

Belarus Belarus, officially the Republic of Belarus, is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe. It is bordered by Russia to the east and northeast, Ukraine to the south, Poland to the west, and Lithuania and Latvia to the northwest. Belarus spans an a ...

Structure

The work comprises two

movements Movement may refer to: Generic uses * Movement (clockwork), the internal mechanism of a timepiece * Movement (sign language), a hand movement when signing * Motion, commonly referred to as movement * Movement (music), a division of a larger c ...

which performed without pause: # Largo – Adagio # Allegro – Largo A typical performance of the work lasts around eighteen minutes

Instrumentation

The original score is for a double

string quartet The term string quartet refers to either a type of musical composition or a group of four people who play them. Many composers from the mid-18th century onwards wrote string quartets. The associated musical ensemble consists of two Violin, violini ...

with four

violin The violin, sometimes referred to as a fiddle, is a wooden chordophone, and is the smallest, and thus highest-pitched instrument (soprano) in regular use in the violin family. Smaller violin-type instruments exist, including the violino picc ...

s and pairs of

viola The viola ( , () ) is a string instrument of the violin family, and is usually bowed when played. Violas are slightly larger than violins, and have a lower and deeper sound. Since the 18th century, it has been the middle or alto voice of the ...

s and

cello The violoncello ( , ), commonly abbreviated as cello ( ), is a middle pitched bowed (sometimes pizzicato, plucked and occasionally col legno, hit) string instrument of the violin family. Its four strings are usually intonation (music), tuned i ...

s. The composer also transcribed the piece for string orchestra, so it is often played by full string sections using more players for each part as well as an added

double bass The double bass (), also known as the upright bass, the acoustic bass, the bull fiddle, or simply the bass, is the largest and lowest-pitched string instrument, chordophone in the modern orchestra, symphony orchestra (excluding rare additions ...

part which usually (but not always) doubles the second cello part an octave lower. Stefan Zweig 1900 cropped

Critical reception

The recording of octet gained average-to-positive reviews. Jeremy Pound of

BBC Music Magazine ''BBC Music Magazine'' is a British monthly magazine that focuses primarily on classical music. The first issue appeared in September 1992. BBC Worldwide, the commercial subsidiary of the BBC, was the original owner and publisher together with ...

wrote: "Filmic, feisty, flamboyant and, admittedly, occasionally a little froth, Ichmouratov’s orchestral music is rarely dull. It benefits here from characterful performances." Carlos Maria Solare of The Strad wrote about Octet: "it is the most musically ambitious piece". Ateş Orga of ClassicalSource.com wrote: "The power of Ichmouratov's writing, his filmic way of giving G-minor a life and death born out of elegiac Tchaikovsky, Mahlerian Schubert, fin de siècle Vienna, the bleakness of wartime Shostakovich, urged me back to the original story. David Guttman of

Gramophone A phonograph, later called a gramophone, and since the 1940s a record player, or more recently a turntable, is a device for the mechanical and analogue reproduction of sound. The sound vibration waveforms are recorded as corresponding physic ...

summarizes much of its reception: "Here there is greater ability to think in paragraphs and a leaner style of melodic emoting, supplementing the usual Romantic Russians with elements recalling Korngold, Schoenberg and Strauss".Gramophone, Ichmouratov – Letter From an Unknown Woman
Retrieved 8 May 2020

References

External links

Airat Ichmouratov, Octet Op.56 "Letter from an Unknown Woman"

Complete performance of the Octet
by Saguenay and Lafayette String Quartets – January 13, 2018 (18:59)
Complete performance of the Octet – String orchestra by the composer
Belarusian State Chamber Orchestra Conductor: Evgeny Bushkov – March 13, 2019 (17:38) {{Portal bar, Classical Music, Canada Compositions by Airat Ichmouratov 2017 compositions Ichmouratov Compositions in G minor