Детали релиза : Lydia Kavina (Лидия Кавина) - Music From The Ether: Original Works For Theremin (1999/2005) [APE (image + .cue)]

Edited By [Digital Editing] - Tatiana Liberman
Executive Producer - Olivia Mattis
Mastered By [24-bit Digital Mastering] - Steve Puntolillo
Mixed By [Mixed And Spatialized] - Brian Brandt (4,11), Steve Puntolillo (4,11)
Oboe - Kristen Fox (5)
Photography - © Parker Peters
Piano - Carol Eaton Elowe (5), Joshua Pierce (1,2,5-10)
Producer - Brian Brandt
Recorded By - Jamie Candildro (1-4, 6-9) , Steve Puntolillo (5,10)
Soprano Vocals - Elizabeth Parcells (10)
Strings - The Portland String Quartet (5)
Theremin - Lydia Kavina

Tracks 5, 10 recorded at John Ford Auditorium, Portland, Maine on 22 June 1977
1 to 4, 6, 7 to 9 recorded at Baby Monster Studios, New York City on 31 May - 1 June 1997

Lydia Kavina (born September 8th, 1967 in Moscow) is the leading thereminist active in the world today. The granddaughter of Leon Theremin's first cousin, she was the inventor's last protégé. She began studying the instrument with him at the age of nine, and was concertizing by age fourteen. Since then, Kavina has given over 500 performances on the instrument. She has served as Master Teacher in Russia, Germany, England and the U.S., including the Theremin Summer Institute in Portland, Maine. Her own works have significantly extended the repertory for the instrument. Her theremin concerto, The Seasons of the Year (1997), was premiered by the Boston Modern Orchestra Project conducted by Gil Rose. With Robert Moog she has produced a video entitled Mastering the Theremin.

Ms. Kavina was the featured theremin soloist with the London Philharmonic Orchestra in the soundtrack score by Howard Shore to the Oscar winning movie Ed Wood. Shore later composed theremin parts for her in the soundtrack to David Cronenberg's Existenz, as well as creating a special "Suite" with chamber orchestra from the Ed Wood score for Kavina's debut recital at The Lincoln Center Summer Festival (2000), New York City. The Lincoln Center debut also featured premiere works written for Ms. Kavina by Christian Wolff and Olga Neuwirth, as well as Miklos Rosza's Spellbound Concerto, all of which have been recorded for Mode.

Терменво́кс (англ. theremin или thereminvox) — музыкальный инструмент, созданный в 1919 русским изобретателем Львом Сергеевичем Терменом (изображённым на фото выше, с Лидией). Игра на терменвоксе заключается в изменении музыкантом расстояния от его рук до антенн инструмента, за счёт чего изменяется ёмкость колебательного контура и, как следствие, частота звука. Вертикальная прямая антенна отвечает за тон звука, горизонтальная подковообразная — за его громкость. Для игры на терменвоксе необходимо обладать идеальным слухом, так как во время игры музыкант не касается инструмента и поэтому может фиксировать положение рук относительно него, полагаясь только на свой слух.

Инструмент предназначен для исполнения любых (классических, эстрадных, джазовых) музыкальных произведений в профессиональной и самодеятельной музыкальной практике, а также для создания различных звуковых эффектов (пение птиц, свист и др.), которые могут найти применение при озвучивании кинофильмов, в театральных постановках, цирковых программах.

Сам Лев Термен считал, что самое удачное произведение для демонстрации возможностей терменвокса — «Вокализ» С. Рахманинова.

Существует несколько разновидностей терменвокса, различающихся конструкцией.

В настоящее время существуют как серийные так и мастеровые терменвоксы, а также существуют школы игры на нём.

Music from the Ether is one of the few available discs employing the Theremin, and the most representative collection to date of art music written exclusively for the instrument. However, the importance of the disc is not only due to this fact, but because it symbolizes the significant role that the Theremin had in expanding the horizons of twentieth-century American music, preempting all other electronic instruments and becoming the standard method of producing electronic sound until the advent of the translator in the late 1960s....

...Music from the Ether is an attempt to focus on the body of music specifically written for the instrument, rather than target other well-known music and tunes arranged for Theremin. The disc consists of twelve tracks and totals just over an one hour of listening time. While as a solo instrument the sound of the Theremin can quickly wear thin, the pieces in this compilation range from solo unaccompanied Theremin, duets for Theremin and piano, Theremin and voice, Theremin and magnetic tape, through a quartet for four Thweremins, to full ensemble for Theremin, oboe, piano and string quartet. The composers of these pieces are Joseph Schillinger (1929 and 1932), Friedrich Wilckens (1933), Percy Grainger (1936), Bohuslav Martinu (1944), Isidor Achron (1945), Lydia Kavina (1989 and 1994), Jorge Antunes (1995), and Vladimir Komarov (1996) - an impressive battery covering over seventy years of music history presented in chronological order. The disc comes complete with a detailed booklet (presented in English, German and French) outlining historical background, listing the contents, credits, and sponsors, as well as informative liner notes by Olivia Mattis about the pieces and performers.

The disc may be looked upon as a three-part narrative. Part 1 is a compilation of pieces written for the Theremin before Kavina. Part 2 is a showcase for Lydia Kavina, the composer. Part 3 is an intersection between the Theremin and twentith-century electronic music. The disc opens with two Shillinger pieces. The first is a beautiful song without words and is actually the piano reduction of the opening movement to the First Airphonic Suite, performed in 1929 by Theremin himself as a soloist accompanied by Schillinger on piano with Nicola Sokoloff conducting the Cleveland Orchestra. The second, more thematic in character, is a show of mathematical (geometrical) principles as found in the Schillinger Method of Musical Composition (where the piece is used for illustratory purpose). Wilckens's Dance in the Moon is a lyrical duet between piano and Theremin in an impressionistic style. The piece exemplifies how well the idiom suits the instrument. Percy Grainger's Free Music #1 is a fascinating exercise that employs a unique graphic score (left and right hands are notated on separate staves), an arrangement calling for four Theremins (all played by Kavina), and a compositional style of free tonality. Unfortunately, the piece lasts only 1'22" and the listener is left hanging in the air. Martinu's Fantasy (premiered by Lucie Bigelow Rosen in 1945) is a beautiful piece that places the oboe in a position as the pivot between timbres of the Theremin and the strings (quartet and piano). While it was penned as one continuous movement lasting 14'23", the piece resembles a chamber concerto employing an ABA form. In between dynamic peaks, the listener is led through an emotional soundscape running the gamut of human experiences. Isidor Achron was known mostly as the accompanist for Jascha Heifets, yet he did write some music. His Improvisation was dedicated to Lucie Bigelow Rosen as a recital piece. After a short introduction, the piece conforms to a more standard ABA form, and might have been intended to place the Theremin in between more popular Tin Pan Alley and classical music styles. Kavina's two compositions are most definitely the show-pieces of the disc. Her performance expertise and compositional insight offer the listener an opportunity to hear the Theremin at its best, and on the highest artistic level ever recorded. Her three-movement Suite for Theremin and was premiered in Poland in 1989. The middle movement, which stands in great contrast to the two outer lyrical sections, is a dynamic demonstration of the range of effects that can be achieved with the instrument; it has, in fact, been arranged for Theremin and synthesizer as a stand-alone number. Her second piece, In the Whims of the Wind, was written for the singer Elizabeth Parcells in 1994. It is an etude highlighting timbre control-attacks and balance-as eloquently illustrated in the interplay between the electronic Theremin and Parcelle's human voice (coloratura soprano). The technical ability of Kavina here is as yet unprecedented by any other Thereminist-even Rockmore! Undoubtedly, this is a masterpiece performed by two master performers. The listener should be aware that the extreme frequency range of the Theremin may damage some speaker systems, and if any piece on this disc will do it, this is the one!

The final two tracks are especially interesting to those with tastes for new music. Jorge Antunes wrote Mixolydia for Lydia, and its name punfully suggests, it is written in the modal style of sixth century B. C., with added magnetic tape supplied by two French electronic research studios. The last piece, by Vladimir Komarov, is a biographic sound collage depicting Thremin-his personality, invention, and history-composed to honor his centennial. The piece is called Voice of Theremin, which is especially befitting as the Russian language still refers to this instrument as the Themenvox, and because the piece is built around synthesized processed sound bites of Theremin's own voice recorded by Komarov himself who accompanied Professor Theremin on his 1991 visit to America. While the impression is that the piece involves a vast amount of computer-generated sounds, it appears that no other sounds except his voice were added. The collage attempts to illustrate Theremin's whirlwind life story, including Mikhael Glinka's Skylark melody (the same melody Theremin performed for Lenin in 1992), and a churning waltz exemplifying his fashionable ballroom standard of living while in America.

Lydia Kavina is a perceptive, insightful, creative, and intelligent performer-composer. In her hands, the Theremin stands out as an instrument well deserving the fruits of new compositional efforts. While some might feel that Music from the Ether is the perfect gift for the classical fan who has everything, this of course is nothing more than a belittling understated cliché. The Theremin, and the music written for it between 1925 and 1950, is as much a part of Americana as was the Packard, Hudson, DeSoto, rumble seat, drive-in movie, soap-box racing, zoot suit, two-toned shoe, hand-painted necktie, pompadour hairdo, ice-box, soda fountain, Kool-Aid, dial telephone. Phonograph, player piano, Wurlitzer, washboard, nickel & dime (5 & 10) store, Horn & Hardart's Automats, Heinz 57 varieties, Ed Sullivans, and so on. All American musicians, music libraries, musicologists, and everyday listeners should embrace Kavina's Music from the Ether with pride.

Warren Brodsky, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev,
American Music, Spring 2004