From the Essential Classics Bandcamp site:
“This album is dedicated to two masterpieces of Russian film music. It is also a reminiscence to Saulius Sondeckis, one of the figureheads of the former Soviet Union chamber music scene, who
died last year, and to Georgy Sviridov, whose 20th anniversary of death is around the corner next year.
The Gadfly Suite. Since his studenthood at the Leningrad Conservatory Dmitri Shostakovich had developed a strong connection to cinema. In the twenties of the last century he earned his living as a pianist at silent movie theatres, and the influence of this new media, which became highly important in the young Soviet Union, went along with the composer for a lifetime testified by an output of nearly 40 film scores.In 1955 Alexander Fainzimmer made a film based on the novel “The Gadfly” by the English authoress Ethel Lilian Voynich, which was extremely popular and a bestseller in the Soviet Union. It was about the tragic story of a young freedom fighter in 19th-century Italy nicknamed „Gadfly“, who, as an illegitimate son of a cardinal ultimately turned into a rebelling dandy, who was finally executed by a firing squad. Shostakovich was intrigued by the plot and the environment where it took place, since this allowed him to play with Mediterranean musical patterns. Shostakovich’s associate and friend Levon Atovmian condensed the complete score down to a suite, consisting of twelve movements, which were used for this recording.“
