Alexander Griboyedov - 2 Waltzes

Griboyedov (1795-1829) was a Russian diplomat, playwright, poet, and composer. He was Russia’s ambassador to Qajar Persia, where he and all the embassy staff were massacred by an angry mob as a result of the rampant anti-Russian sentiment that existed through Russia’s imposing of the Treaty of Gulistan (1813) and Treaty of Turkmenchay (1828), which had forcefully ratified for Persia’s ceding of its northern territories comprising Transcaucasia and parts of the North Caucasus. To me these pieces are an interesting document, since I uploaded only pieces from the “russian school“ so far, meaning basically from 1870 onwards. This composer on the other hand was born a couple of years after -Mozart’s- death. The waltzes are beautiful and no wonder Sokolov has them (or at least the second one) in his repertoire for ’extras’ after the concert.