It's fascinating to learn that Gliere recorded, as
conductor, two of his own symphonies.
Your observation about Kallinikov prompts me to observe that Gliere, along with many other minor composers (George LLoyd , as a composer I have been listening to recently, comes to my mind as one) who wrote expertly-crafted thoroughly enjoyable music which, however doesn't have its own distinctive voice. If, when listening to such music, one is constantly referring to other composers for comparison I think, in many ways, it diminishes the achievement of the composer who has produced it.
I first got to know Gliere's music around fifty years ago (an old Monitor LP of the coloratura concerto coupled with three other Soviet concertos) and liked it well enough to listen to other examples of his music over the intervening years. I have to say that, while enjoying much of it, I don't find it distinctive enough to be really memorable.
Maybe there are others who rank Gliere rather higher than I do; there might be some who rank him lower.
This thread encouraged me to dig out a couple of discs that I remember very much enjoying but that I hadn’t listened to in years - Gliere’s own recordings of his first and second symphonies. Both were released in 1995 on the Consonance label.
Disc 81-3001 has Gliere conducting his first symphony in 1950 with the All-Union Radio Orchestra and is coupled with a 1968 performance of his harp concerto (Olga Erdeli, USSR Radio and TV Large Symphony Orchestra/Boris Khaikin).
Disc 81-3002 has Gliere conducting his second symphony in 1949 with the All-Union Radio Orchestra and is coupled with a 1974 performance of his concerto for coloratura soprano (Evgenia Miroshnichenko, Bolshoi Theatre Orchestra/Mark Ermler).
As you might well expect, the sound quality is a bit rough and ready, but the composer delivers really attractive performances, especially in the case of symphony no. 1 (which sounds here like it might almost be a Kallinikov symphony no. 3!). As far as I know, he never recorded Ilya Murometz, which is rather a shame.
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