Igor MarkevitchCritiques

As we close-out 1912 (his centenary year), most persons continue to be utterly unaware of one of the great composers of his day, a man known now almost exclusively for a series of ravishing recordings under his baton, especially for Walter Legge's EMI. A good aprt of the reason for this is that Markevitch just stopped composing, like Sibelius and Rebecca Clarke, to name only two, and that was before the invetion of the long-playing record. Almost two decades ago the intrepid pianist-conductor Christopher Lyndon-Gee began to document Markevitch's fascinating works. On this particular installment of Marco Polo's Markevitch series, the oratorio LORENZO DE' MEDICI is ravishing, both in its own right, and as a platform for the singing of soprano Lucy Shelton. It is gently ironic, I suppose, that my favourite track on this disc is the purely instrumental section "Contemplazione della bellezza". It is not a merely a contemplation of beauty, but a signal instance of beauty for us to contemplate.