Doublereed Archive - Posting 000005.txt from 2005/10

From: "Lacy, Edwin" <el2@-----.edu>
Subj: RE: [DR-L] Program Notes
Date: Mon, 03 Oct 2005 11:51:34 -0400

<<<I am currently doing a recital and need to write program notes for
these two pieces but I cannot seem to find information. They are
Miroshnikov's Scherzo and Jacob Gordon's Partita for Solo Bassoon.>>>

I just played a recital last week on which I played the Gordon Jacob
Partita and also TWO pieces by Miroshnikov - the Scherzo and also an
Adagio, Opus 40. I tried for years to find out anything I could about
the composer, but without much success. I had several research
librarians working on this puzzle for years. One of them found out that
his middle name was Viktorovich, which indicates that his father's name
was Viktor Miroshnikov. I tried to follow the trail through
genealogical research, but gave that up when I was able to confirm what
I had been told, that such research is essentially impossible in Russia.

Finally, I corresponded by e-mail with an oboist in the Bolshoi Ballet
Orchestra in Moscow, who sent me the Adagio. The copy I received was in
manuscript, and apparently was never published even in Russia. The
oboist, whose name I have forgotten at the moment, inquired among the
older members of the orchestra, and found some of them who remembered
Miroshnikov. They said that he was a cellist, not a bassoonist, and
that he was still playing in various orchestras around Moscow as late as
the 1950's or early 1960's. They described him as a very elderly man at
that time.

That is why I am suspicious of the information you can find by doing a
google search to the effect that he was born in 1925. I think he was
probably older than that. Where that information came from, I have no
idea. Presumably whoever posted it on the internet has some kind of
confirmation, but it isn't possible to find out.

I would like nothing better than to submit the Adagio for publication,
but since Russia has become a signatory to the international copyright
protocol, doing so could result in me landing in jail, which I would
rather not do!

I'm sure you found that the Gordon Jacob was dedicated to William
Waterhouse, formerly principal bassoonist of the BBC Orchestra in
London. Waterhouse performed it at the very first meeting of the IDRS
in 1972 at the University of Michigan.

Ed Lacy
University of Evansville

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