One might wish that the three works of Kara Karayev featured here -- a symphony, a tone poem, and a suite drawn from a film -- were more distinctive and that Karayev's voice was more individualistic, but there is enjoyment to be found on this unusual recording. Born in Baku, Azerbaijan, and a student of
Dmitry Shostakovich in Moscow, Karayev unites in his style his country's national music, his teacher's social realistic music, and, in the symphony, international serialism. To the extent these elements coalesce in each individual piece, the music succeeds. Thus, the early tone poem Leyla and Mejnun works well as a piece of Azerbaijan social realism and the later Don Quixote works moderately well as a piece of film music, while the Symphony No. 3 sounds too much like too many other composers' attempts at serial composition to have its own identity. Still, conductor
Dmitry Yablonsky and the
Russian Philharmonic Orchestra do their best by the composer. Though their accounts of these unfamiliar works are not much more than run-throughs, there is a gritty determination in their attack and a hard-won cohesiveness in their ensemble that makes the performances sufficiently convincing. If the results sometimes remind listeners of such international paragons as
Hindemith and other times of such Soviet also-rans as Popov and Khrennikov, this is more the responsibility of the composer than the performers. Naxos' Russian digital sound is dry and close, with not much in the way of color or impact.