This Week's Sneak Peek

I've been compiling playlists on my iPod for a long drive I've got in a couple weeks, and one piece I was looking for, to add to a playlist of classical concerti, was a flute concerto by 20th Century Armenian composer Aram Khachaturian. I have a recording of the third movement on an old cassette tape somewhere; it's a lively virtuoso piece with a lot of flair.

I couldn't find that recording in Apple Tunes, but I knew that it was actually an arrangement of a violin concerto. I found that on a double CD along with a bunch of other Khachaturian orchestral music, mostly unfamiliar to me other than a couple movements of the Masquerade Suite.

Too bad that liner notes didn't come with download of the double CD. I listened to one of the unfamiliar pieces, his Piano Concerto in D-flat, over the weekend, and what struck me was that in the middle of one movement, a Theremin completely steals the limelight.

For anyone who doesn't know what a Theremin is, it's an electronic instrument created by Leon Theremin in 1928. The eerie sound is created by waving one's hands through an electronically excited field between a pair of antennae. You're likely to have heard it in old movies or TV shows about ghosts or space aliens or hypnosis.

The Theremin is an extremely difficult instrument to play well; you might compare it to playing Trombone Champ. So what is it doing in a piano concerto?

To begin with, the concerto is probably the least Soviet musical form there is. One performer gets to be the star of the piece, showing off his or her superior performing ability with the rest of the orchestra in a somewhat subservient role. And yet Khachaturian, Prokofiev, Shostakovich and others got away with writing them anyway.

But not without a whole lot of supervision from the regional commissar. And along comes Soviet inventor Leon Theremin with his new-fangled instrument, so the word from Stalin comes down to showcase Soviet Russian ingenuity. Comrade Composer, you have a choice: stick a Theremin part in your piano concerto, or it's off to re-education camp for you. 

And be happy Stalin is not insisting you include it in a piece for marching band.