An Old Leaf on an Ancient Russia

Thanks for Hayk Melikyan for supplying the score for this article!

With a new job still taking time away from my productiveness and a lot of performing at the beginning of the month my big Nikolay Tcherepnin article is still in the works, but thankfully a leaf has fallen into my lap that begs for articlizing.  This descent into blog eligibility came about oddly compared to much of the music I cover here in that I heard the piece before seeing the score.  Shocking, I know!  But this is the way it'd probably be without a little help from my friends, as no amount of internetty searching could give me any solid info on this:

If you heard the Tcherepnin works from the Baba Yaga article and the article of his 6 Horn Quartets this should come as unexpectedly as a voice from beyond the grave.  This "Old Russian Song" is a rare piece for piano right hand alone, a genre that hasn't gotten much attention as many pieces already feel like they're for the right hand alone (...Chopin...).  It took me ages to find the score for this piece, as eventually I had to resort to contacting the pianist, Hayk Melikyan, through his official Facebook page - eventually his manager sent me a scan and I can't stop thanking them for their help as otherwise I probably would have never found this piece.

As far as I can tell this piece has only been published in a mid-1980's Soviet collection edited by Nikolay Kopchevsky (...who?...) and I still don't know if it's part of a larger set.  It's a minor revelation in what can be done with a single hand, putting all its chips on pacing, right-hand dexterity and pedalled atmosphere and winning big.  Most composers don't have the guts to write music this sparse and precious, always going for Bigger rather than Better, and I've long admired these kinds of pieces, such as when Persichetti proved that his simplest song could also be one of his most powerful.  This is definitely a piece from late in Tcherepnin's career, during a period of wistful experimentation that included his enchantingly oblique Sentimental Pieces (another Forgotten Leaves candidate) - the dramatic arc is flat and repetitive, forward motion is nil and the harmonies are insinuated through Syrinx-esque chromatic trailing.  And, man, how many people I'd kill to have thought of that final denoument.  Hayk Melikyan's performance is arresting in its sensitivity and amplification of Tcherepnin's subtleties and little brilliances, making this a heck of an interlude on your next mixtape, and maybe my next recital.  Surprisingly great work all around, and hopefully you won't have to wait too much longer for the Big Tcherepnin Show...

~PNK