Scorekeeper

Maestro Arthur Arnold releases CD of rare compositions

BY ANDY RICE

“Score” is one of those interesting words that can take on different meanings depending on how it is used. Sometimes, even at the same time.

Just ask maestro Arthur Arnold, who scored big in tracking down two virtually-unknown scores from Russian composer Alexander Mosolov and recording them for a world premiere CD. Released on December 4 on the Naxos label, it features the Moscow Symphony Orchestra (MSo), the ensemble he conducts when not busy helming the PRISMA Festival in Powell River.

American harpist Taylor Fleshman, a PRISMA student in 2018 and 2019, is the soloist on Mosolov’s “lost” Concerto for Harp and Orchestra, which comprises the second half of the disc.

It all started three years ago with an email from Russian arts entrepreneur Max Gutbrod who had begun a search for rare Mosolov works and was looking for conductors to bring them to life. He introduced Arthur to renowned musicologist Ina Barsova, who then steered him toward the Lenin Library where there was talk of a mysterious box that had been dropped off several months earlier by the younger boyfriend of Mosolov’s deceased widow.

“I asked the librarian if she’d show it to me and at first she didn’t budge,” Arthur

LISTEN HERE:

To hear the CD or purchase a copy, visit naxos.com and search “Mosolov.” It is also available for streaming on Apple Music. More information about Arnold and the 2021 PRISMA Festival––a special strings-only edition––can be found at prismafestival.com.

recalled. “Eventually, I persuaded her to go get the box and I found dusty manuscripts in there that had never been performed. I was taking all these pictures with my iPhone as she sort of grinned and looked the other way.”

Individual parts for each of the orchestra members were nowhere to be found, so Arthur had to create them. Several months later, Mosolov’s 5th Symphony was ready to present to the MSO. After only a single run-through it was already clear that they had something special. Mosolov may have been censored and relegated to the Gulag during his lifetime, but Arthur wasn’t about to let his music fall into silence.

He is now in the process of digitalizing Mosolov’s original handwritten scores of the 3rd and 4th symphonies as well, and will premiere and record them for the Naxos label in 2021. An official edition of the harp concerto is soon to be published by Compozitor in St. Petersburg. Beyond that, Arthur has even further ambitions.

“In 2023 it will be 50 years since his death,” said Arthur. “I hope that somewhere in the world I can do a Mosolov festival to commemorate that, give it some attention and make more people aware of his music. More orchestras should perform his works.”