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Posted by Jeffrey Davis Other highlights to come are the folk-songish No 23 which I remember last encountering on one of those fine old EMI/Melodiya LPs with ASD prefixes (coupled with a very fine work Rodion Schederin's epic Symphony No 1).
on June 29, 2007, 5:16 pm
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What great news (thank you Rob!)about the phoenix-like revival of Svetlanov's Myaskovsky symphony cycle, at budget price, on Alto. The valedictory No 27 is a masterpiece, the last great demonstration, I believe, of that romantic spirit which had moved Rachmaninov and Glazunov to produce such fine works. The slow movement, written whilst the composer was stricken with cancer and under a cloud of soviet disapproval following the crazy Zhdanov purge of 1948 is perhaps the most touching and moving of all and is followed by a paen to life, in the finale, in which the dying composer seems to look forward to the return of Spring, after the Winter, knowing that he himself would not live to see it. Good as Polyansky's Chandos version is, Svetlanov's is better.
Myaskovsky's 16th which commemorates an air disaster has a terrifically brooding and funereal slow movement and Symphony 15 (also recorded by Kondrashin) and especially No 17 (used as background music in a TV series "Stalin the Red Tsar" of decades ago) are amongst Myaskovsky's greatest works.
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