Sergey Zhukov    
   

 

composer

honored art worker of Russian Federation

 
                         
    compositions      
   

 

 

Sergey Zhukov: Concerto for Orchestra and percussions

Still unknown in North America, Sergei Zhukov (born 1951) has only merited two or three commercial CD recordings to date, and none of them contain his exciting percussion concerto, redolent of early Stravinsky and easily the equal of recent percussion concerti by Americans such as Joan Tower, John Corigliano, and Joseph Schwantner. Much of Zhukov’s idiom follows the generational influence of Alfred Schnittke and Sofia Gubaidulina, eclectically mixing Russian primitivism, free atonality, genre pastiche, and post-Soviet soul-searching (the latter at times signified by a prepared piano).
Some of his music—such as his piano concerto, Silentium—can be an intellectual chore (imagine Gubaidulina at her dreariest), but his colorful, cinematic 1990 percussion concerto could well form the basis of a 30-minute short film, contrasting the alternately busy, anxious, and reverential soloist with an orchestra sometimes angry, sometimes reserved. The work’s indebtedness to The Rite of Spring is obvious, particularly when fortissimo horn glissandi abruptly signal the climax, but after the storm subsides, Zhukov melodically segues into a lovely dusk and a shimmering starlight of bells and glockenspiel.
 

 ANDREW GROSSMAN

Cacophonies and Heavenly Choruses: A Cure for the Classical Blues
POP MATTERS
03 Sep 2015