Daniel Kurganov, Constantine Finehouse - Rhythm & the Borrowed Past (2021)

Soviet-born American Violinist Daniel Kurganov and Russian-American pianist Constantine Finehouse perform a stunning program of contemporary and 20th-century music by Lera Auerbach, Richard Beaudoin, John Cage and Olivier Messiaen. As Richard Beaudoin argues in his booklet notes, this program is characterized by the powerful sense of rhythm shared by these composers and the performers themselves.

Russian polymath Lera Auerbach uses rhythm in a rhetorical and unifying way in her dramatic Violin Sonata No. 3 (2005). Richard Beaudoin composed In höchster Not when he was a student of Michael Finnissy; during the work’s three contrapuntal movements the violin and piano are often independent, even out-of-sync. John Cage is known for his witty avant-garde experiments in sound and his Nocturne (1947) is written in fluid notation, allowing the performers considerable freedom in their interpretation so that every performance is truly unique. Olivier Messiaen’s rhythms were influenced by Indian music and are combined in his Thème et variations (1932), as with all his music, with a vivid sense of color.

Daniel Kurganov has been described in Fanfare Magazine as a musician of “smoldering intensity” with an “ingratiatingly idiomatic violinistic personality”.
Tracklist
01. Violin Sonata No. 3: I. Adagio tragico
02. Violin Sonata No. 3: II. Allegro marcato
03. Violin Sonata No. 3: III. Adagio pesante
04. Violin Sonata No. 3: IV. Allegro assai
05. In höchster Not: I. Feroce - Recitativo - Moderato
06. In höchster Not: II. Poco maestoso - Largo
07. In höchster Not: III. Andante - Più mosso - Largo - Prestissimo
08. Nocturne for Violin & Piano
09. Thème et variations, I/10: Thème. Modéré
10. Thème et variations, I/10: Var. 1, Modéré
11. Thème et variations, I/10: Var. 2, Modéré, un peu vif
12. Thème et variations, I/10: Var. 3, Modéré, avec éclat
13. Thème et variations, I/10: Var. 4, Vif et passionné
14. Thème et variations, I/10: Var. 5, Très lent