French harpist and recording artist Xavier de Maistre’s most recent album release on the Sony Classical label features music entirely by Russian composers, including two concertos. The first is a familiar classic: Reinhold Glière’s concerto, influenced by folk music and Romanticism. The second concerto on de Maistre’s CD was written one year later by Glière’s pupil, Alexander Mosolov, who was part of the Russian musical avant-garde. For both concertos, de Maistre is accompanied by the German radio orchestra WDR Sinfonieorchester Köln, conducted by Nathalie Stutzmann. The album also features “Prelude et la Romanesca” from Alexander Glazunov’s ballet Raymonda, as well as de Maistre’s arrangement of Tchaikovsky’s famous “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy” from The Nutcracker.
The album is available on Spotify and Apple Music. To learn more about de Maistre, read our feature interview with him in the November/December 2019 issue of Harp Column.
