Reinhold Glière (1975-1956)

Concerto for Harp and Orchestra in E-flat major, Op. 74, (1938)

1. Allegro moderato
2. Tema con variazioni
3. Allegro giocoso

Rheinhold Glière was born in Kiev on the 11th January 1875 the second son of a wind instrument maker Ernst Glier from Saxony. He entered the Moscow Conservatory of music in 1894 and graduated in 1900, having been awarded a gold medal in composition. Soon after he gave private lessons to the eleven-year old Sergei Prokofiev. In the following years he gained status as a composer and teacher, becoming the director of the Kiev Conservatory of Music in 1913. He stayed in Russia after the revolution, working in the Moscow Conservatory from 1920 to 1941, where he studied ethnomusicology and developed a compositional style which combined the classical tradition of Glinka and Tchaikovsky with folk idioms, in particular from Azerbaijan. He became famous for his large scale orchestral works, operas and ballets which, due to their slavonic colours and their lyricism were not only popular with the public, but also won favour with the Soviet authorities. He died in Moscow on the 23rd June 1956.

The concerto for Harp and Orchestra is typical of Gliere's mature style. It is very conservative compared with the work of his contemporaries: Stravinsky, Prokofiev and Shostakovich, but it has remained popular for it's immediacy and lyrical beauty. Gliere worked with the harpist Ksenia Erdely, whose help he was prepared to acknowledge by crediting her as a co-composer, an offer that she modestly declined.

Glière's Harp concerto was performed by the Portobello Orchestra on the 6th December 2014. The soloist was Juliana Myslov and the orchestra was conducted by Matthew Rogers.