Nikolai Roslavets ‒ 5 Preludes

Nikolai Roslavets (1881 - 1944), 5 Preludes (1919 - 1922) Performed by Jenny Lin 00:00 - No. 1 Andante affettuoso 01:57 - No. 2 Allegretto con moto 04:37 - No. 3 Lento 07:00 - No. 4 Lento 08:57 - No. 5 Lento; Rubato Nikolay Andreyevitch Roslavets has emerged as one of the most fascinating figures in Russian music in the first half of the twentieth century. Unlike most of his composer contemporaries in the early Soviet period, he genuinely came from a peasant background. In autobiographical jottings dating from 1924, he described his birthplace—Dushatino in the Ukraine, where he first drew breath on 4 January 1881 (Old Style 23 December 1880)—as ‘a godforsaken, half-Ukrainian, half-Byelorussian hole’. At first self-taught, Roslavets began to study music during the 1890s by attending classes in Kursk, the nearest large city, and was eventually accepted as a student at the Moscow Conservatory, where he studied violin as well as composition under Sergei Vassilenko and Mikhail Ip