MIROSLAV DANEV (b.1958): Flute Sonata, Wind Quintet, String Quartet, Orchestra: Aeon, Karnushka, Passacaglia and Toccata.
Catalogue Number: 01L100
Label: Gega
Reference: GD 342
Format: CD
Price: $16.98
Description: Danev's orchestral works are bold and tonal; fine, standard examples of Soviet and post-Soviet eastern-European neo-romanticism. Aeon is a 23-minute tone poem posing a kind of philosophical journey of evolution of mankind, from Le sacre-like mystery and primitive, rhythmic drive through classical elegance to higher reasoning and spirituality. Karnushka vividly depicts a riotous village fair, while the somber, dark-hued Passacaglia, accumulating layers of orchestral texture as it progresses, and the rhythmically unstable, dancing toccata achieve respectively a monumental and hectically exhilarating quality. The wind quintet and the sonata for the composer's own instrument are attractively neoclassical, with impressionistic instrumental color. The tautly argued string quartet combines four conventional movements into an unbroken span; the idiom is never far from that of Shostakovich's early quartets. Various artists, Bulgarian National Radio Symphony Orchestra; Milen Nachev, Grigor Palikarov, Georgi Andreev.