Ichmouratov: Piano Concerto, Viola Concerto No. 1

Chronique

The music of Airat Ichmouratov is becoming increasingly popular, and here, he hits the big time with a recording on the major Chandos label, one which hit classical best-seller charts in the summer of 2023. He is also a klezmer clarinetist, but none of these varied strands of his background shows up much in this pair of concertos, one for viola (he wrote it for the doctoral recital of the violinist here, Elvira Misbachova, and romance flowered), and one, later, for piano. Instead, the music is late Romantic in style. What sets Ichmouratov apart from his sizable group of competitors in this area is a strongly evocative, cinematic quality to his music. He has apparently never written film scores, and there is no evidence that he knows the works of John Williams and the like, but it is an occupation he might try sometime. Sample the calm string serenade of the slow movement, evocative of the resolution of a long conflict, with the piano entering after a considerable time in a high range at a clockwork pace, unfolding what sounds like a distant memory that gathers intensity as the movement proceeds. Much of the music is episodic in the manner of a film score; the Viola Concerto is a bit more oriented toward traditional concerto form, but the soloist is given a great variety of utterances. Chandos' sound from LSO St. Luke's is a bit remote and tends to swallow up pianist Jean-Philippe Sylvestre, but both soloists are sympathetic to the music. Listeners who favor neo-Romantic styles may not be familiar with Ichmouratov, but it seems a good bet that they will be hearing his name frequently going forward.
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