The first five volumes of
this heroic project have now arrived in the
shops and it is typical that it should be
through the enterprise of Olympia - one of
the 'non-majors' - that these digital recordings
made a decade ago in Moscow should have found
their way into general circulation.
This is a historically significant
set being the first single conductor-single
orchestra traversal of the twenty-seven symphonies
of Miaskovsky. By the way, am I wrong to render
the name as 'Miaskovsky' rather than Olympia's
'Myaskovsky'? My preference follows the BBC
style.
Leaving aside a small 'print-run'
boxed set, with scanty notes, Olympia are
responsible for issuing these premiere commercial
recordings of symphonies 4, 13, 14 and 20.
The others have been available in other versions
on a tatterdemalion panoply of cassette, CD
and LP over the years. The Thirteenth will
be familiar, to those 'in the know', via an
off-air recording of a BBC Radio 3 evening
concert by the BBC Welsh Symphony conducted
by Tadaaki Otaka on 9 November 1994. That
fine scholar of Russian music, David Fanning,
gave the introduction.
On the showing of these discs,
newcomers to Miaskovsky as well as long-time
adherents can place their faith in the series.
The recordings are mostly digital, cavernously
dramatic or honeyed as in the great and sweetly
sorrowing string hymn in the first movement
of No. 25. Svetlanov is pretty broad in his
tempi and this has provoked criticism in some
quarters. It has not troubled me except in
the case of the Fifth although I would be
interested to have comments from those who
know the full scores of the symphonies.
The First Symphony is
Tchaikovskian. This is the stygian darker
Tchaikovsky of Manfred (a work in which
Svetlanov's 1960s BMG-Melodiya recording with
the USSRSO has yet to be beaten though Yuri
Ahronovich's unissued LSO concert performance
at the RFH in on 19 September 1978 came close.
The same concert included one of the all-time
great Francescas - any chance BBC Legends?).
It is played with here out and out commitment
typical of these Russians. Listen to the rasping
crackling brass at 10.20 and 16.09 in the
first movement - the rising of a tragic sun
from deepest gloom. Miaskovsky was good at
bass-heavy gloom (try the Seventh, Tenth and
Thirteenth symphonies). Overall the work reminded
me somewhat of Scriabin's six movement First
Symphony. The larghetto is languidly
paced - as is Svetlanov's wont - and he paces
the music appositely. The Allegro assai
strides along athletic and hoarsely proud
and without bombast. Nice stereo separation
in the violin dialogue at 2.43. There is a
great peroration to the finale but earlier
parts of it seem to be going through the motions.
Otherwise this is freshly envisioned music.
Symphony No. 25 (a
work much under the shadow of the war with
Germany) has a real charging attack in the
allegro impetuoso third movement. This
vigour is offset by a lovingly shaped and
lovely melancholy at 02.15 et seq.
Listen to the thunderous rap of the drum impact
at 3.38 and the calamitously screaming trumpets
emulating garish bugle calls at 6.30. This
is definitely one of the works to return to
among the twenty-seven. This digital version
was issued, not long after the recording sessions,
on Melodiya SUCD 10-00474 coupled with Symphony
No. 24. The only other of these Svetlanov
digital tapes previously to surface commercially
was that of Symphony No. 17 - yet to be issued
by Olympia. Neither of these old SUCD Melodiyas
had widespread distribution. I managed to
hunt them down via friends in the USA where
there were still a few copies in the bigger
shops. That apart there is also a very old
Melodiya LP of No. 25 conducted by Konstantin
Ivanov.
A sharply trudging accented
rhythm launches the first movement of the
Second Symphony. This is a work from
his time in Moscow at the end of his formal
studies. It was not premiered until April
1915 by which time he was in action with the
Russian Army. The concert was in St Petersburg
with the Court Orchestra conducted by Hugo
Warlich. This was quite a Miaskovsky event
as the tone poem Silence was also premiered
on the same programme. The music has that
archetypical black swooning, acid-hailing
hysteria and craggy gait so characteristic
of the composer and redolent of Rachmaninov's
Isle of the Dead, Tchaikovsky's Fifth
Symphony and Francesca (listen to the
last five minutes of the first movement) and
of Mussorgsky. The Adagio serioso is
hesitant, melancholic and reflective with
some recall, along the way, of the big slow
movement of Rachmaninov's Second Symphony.
This disc has competition from Gottfried Rabl
and the Vienna SO (Orfeo C 496 991 A) and
a deleted Russian Revelation RV 10068 with
Rozhdestvensky. Rabl is quick: 13.00, 13.44,
15.28. Rozhdestvensky: 14.05, 14.56, 15.23.
Svetlanov: 13.52, 16.21, 16.41. I am not all
sure about the ending of the work - rather
perfunctory and abrupt - but this is an issue
with the work not with Svetlanov's exegesis.
Three weeks to write in piano
score and one week to orchestrate saw the
Eighteenth Symphony emerge into a world
racked with disappearances and show trials.
Its mood is rambunctious like a boozy country
fair with echoes of Balakirev's concert overtures
and Mussorgsky's Neva melancholy. There
is also the jauntiness of Bax's fake Slav
Gopak and an ungenteel uproar that
does remind you of Copland's Rodeo and
Billy the Kid more often than you might
think. The idyll of the long lento (longer
than the other two movements put together)
gives way to a return to folksy capering and
the gentle musing of the silver birch trees.
The work was very popular in the Soviet Union
and travelled far and wide carrying its dedication
to the twentieth anniversary of the October
Revolution. It was even arranged for military
band - a version that so impressed the composer
that the Nineteenth was actually written for
military band. A world away the British
composer Joseph Holbrooke, during the same
decade, wrote his Fifth (Wild Wales)
and Sixth (Old England) Symphonies
for brass band and military band respectively.
Both made heavy use of national folksong.
The Third Symphony shudders
forward aggressive and driven with resentment
and bitter bile. Melancholy even tinges the
hints of brightness as at 3.31 in the first
movement. And in those trumpet gestures clawing
upwards in spavine splendour we see both an
inheritance from Scriabin and a legacy unmistakably
embraced by Miaskovsky pupil, Khachaturyan.
If you know the emotional slough in which
Bax's Second Symphony heroically basks and
rises from much of the first of the two movements
will be familiar. It is at the same time both
tense and pessimistic. The gloom has a tendency
to stifle. Finally, listen to the rattle and
gripe of the brass as the work stutters to
end of the 25 min second and final movement.
I compared the 1965 sound of this disc with
the original Olympia Melodiya licensed disc
OCD 177 and the deeper brass sounded noticeably
better in the new transfer but the slavonic
steel soprano tones of the trumpet benches
seem identical. There probably isn't much
in it. OCD 177 was AAD. This issue is ADD.
Until the mid-1990s few people
knew anything about the Thirteenth Symphony
except that it probably had to exist as
there was a Twelfth and a Fifteeenth (both
had been recorded). The Fourteenth had to
wait until the Svetlanov set was issued to
stagger blinking into the sunlight. The BBC
commissioned the first performance in modern
times from the BBC Welsh Symphony Orchestra
conducted by Nimbus Rachmaninov and Mathias
specialist, Tadaaki Otaka. It was revealed
as a soul brother to No. 3: equally gloomy
of mien but tonally adventurous - so much
so that, its clarity of orchestration aside,
it suggests Bernard van Dieren in the Chinese
Symphony. Frank Bridge (There is a Willow
and Phantasm), Bax (specifically
with reference to the Second Northern Ballad)
and Berg are other triangulation points. Svetlanov
gives us the world's first ever commercial
recording and makes what I take to be an expressionist
success of it. This is a twenty minute single
movement essay in contemplation and stormy
hammerhead clouds. The scurry of the strings
and the crump and grump of the brass are impressive.
Do not expect Tchaikovskian dramatics. This
work is a denizen of the lower registers.
Its length is comparable with the much more
prominent Twenty-First but otherwise there
are few parallels. There is a studio cough
at 11.55 in the second movement. Miaskovsky
also regales us with a somnolent yet magisterial
brass chorale like a hymn to something without
a garish atom in its being. The slowly melting
relentlessly drift icy sheets of string sound
(17.55) recall Pettersson - another pessimist
or at least a traveller in the underworld
with a mission to find moonlight; certainly
not the dazzling glare of the sun. Yes Petterssonians
will want this fix of Miaskovsky. When the
work ends (peters out really) it evokes the
bedraggled motion of a fatigued clock. This
is Lemminkainen in Tuonela without the Swan,
without the high jinks of the Homecoming and
with none of the amorous adventures with the
Maidens of Saari.
Volume 4 again couples a
great rarity with a work that is familiar,
at least to Miaskovskians. The Fourth Symphony
was planned as a work 'quiet, simple and
humble'. These qualities must have been channelled
through a charcoaled mirror for the mood is
typically subdued for the first five minutes
before rushing along in one of Miaskovsky's
scurrying scherzos - one part Rimsky and two
parts utterly original Miaskovsky. The Sibelian
upward striking flute glissandi amid brass
calls are highly original. Note also the fractured
trumpet fanfares echoing and the Sibelian
woodwind at I - 9.40. This is a really striking
coup. Listen also to how he unleashes the
furies at 13.43. The Fourth is determined
and stern even when it moves with speed and
fury. In track 3 at 18.00 Kaschei's ecstasy
is referred to - a momentary revelation. The
work fascinates also for the first stirrings
(5.48 track 3) of material to be developed
in the tragic-heroic Fifth. These can be heard
in the allegro energico finale. Also notable
is some utterly unique dialoguing between
dour brass and sibelian woodwind. It ends
with a totally surprising positive major key
'blare' right out of Tchaikovsky 5 and Rimsky-Korsakov.
The Svetlanov Eleventh
Symphony 'competes' with Veronika Dudarova's
Moscow SO version on another time-expired
Olympia (OCD133 issued in 1987!). Dudarova
later recorded a respectable digital Sixth
for Olympia in the 1990s but she also gave
the world a rather sleepy Glazunov Oriental
Fantasy - not the best of Glazunov anyway.
Dudarova's Eleventh goes at a smarter clip
than Svetlanov's (31.09 rather than 34.46).
The Symphony is certainly worth having and
Svetlanov does it very well indeed. He breathes
a ruddy life into the work which is written
in Miaskovsky's most accessible style. The
horn-lofted theme at 3.45 is tossed from section
to section of the orchestra with confident
abandon and it works ... in spades. The offbeat
strokes and stutters of the end of the first
movement demonstrate Miaskovsky's originality
and his judgement. The Andante is delicate
and warming using the nostalgic Grieg-like
sound familiar from the string serenades and
Sinfonietta. The theme is a variant of the
hurrying scherzo element from the first movement.
The Precipitato-Allegro is in ingenious variation
form - tightly put together rather than loquacious.
The premiere was in Moscow on 16 January 1933.
It is dedicated to Maximilian Steinberg, the
son-in-law of Rimsky-Korsakov and no mean
symphonist himself. His five are gradually
being recorded by DG with Neeme Järvi
directing. The First and Second are already
available. And I wonder if John Williams got
the threatening shark figure from Jaws
through hearing the Lento preamble to
the Allegro Agitato.
The Fifth Symphony (with
the Violin Concerto) is the Miaskovsky work
I would propose to 'unbelievers' and to those
curious about the composer. Neither the Cello
Concerto nor the famed Twenty-First matches
its power of utterance. Unfortunately Svetlanov
takes the work at a lumbering pace which,
although revealing details often subsumed
in drama, rather saps the work's power except
in the case of the Baba Yaga (Liadov)
brevity of the folksy Allegro Burlando
(III). The worst effect comes in the Allegro
risoluto (IV) which for most of its 10.52
sounds tired. This is certainly the best recorded
sound and the orchestral contribution is matchless
even in subtlety. Just listen to the long
diminuendo at the end of the first movement.
However as a whole its incredibly distended
44.05 just does not cohere as it should. My
preference would be for the 1980s Olympia
(OCD133) of Konstantin Ivanov in which the
music moves with urgency (36.00) and is given
a dramatic cutting edge. Only slightly behind
comes the Balkanton CD 030078 at c 38.00 but
you will have your work cut out finding this.
It is worth it though. This has the work played
by the Plovdiv PO/Dimiter Manolov. Then there
is the Marco Polo 8.223499 - BBCPO/Edward
Downes. This is the quickest of all at just
short of 36.00 and is much easier to get.
The Fifth is the sort of
work that would have you egging the orchestra
on in front of your loudspeakers for all the
world like Beecham bellowing exhortation in
his live BBCSO performance of the Sibelius
Second. Think of Svetlanov's interpretation
as the counterpart of Bernstein's 1980s Enigma.
You will learn new things about the work but
you will miss its essential character.
The Twelfth Symphony
was premiered in Moscow under the baton of
Albert Coates who paid scant regard to the
composer's tempi. Illness kept the composer
from the premiere - but perhaps fear of suffering
at the hands of Coates what Rachmaninov had
suffered from Glazunov at the first performance
of the First Symphony had more to do with
it. This is in the usual three movements rather
than the Fifth's four. It has been recorded
once before on Marco Polo with Stankovsky
and the Czecho-Slovak RSO (8.223302). A dancing
and sometimes poetic Slavonic folksiness (part
Copland, part Glazunov, part Rimsky, part
Bliss at 7.40 of the finale) plays through
the pages of the big first movement rather
paralleling the Eighteenth and Twenty-Sixth
Symphonies and the third movement of the Fifth.
The three movements have a programme appended:
i. before the October Revolution, ii. the
Struggle for new life and iii. Victory over
the Kulak (wealthy landed classes) supremacy.
Levon Hakobian attributes the bleak pessimism
of the Thirteenth Symphony to Miaskovsky's
shame over the political compromises he made
over the Twelfth. If there is a problem it
is with the gauche programme not so much with
the music which is alive with a well-lit imagination
though bombast puts in an appearance once
too often in the Presto Agitato (II).
Listen to the wind and string shivers at the
end of the first movement for a few of the
strengths and to the plainchant earnestness
of the Allegro festivo (III, 3.40).
Svetlanov makes more of this than Stankovsky.
It is not top-notch Miaskovsky but it is a
not unattractive work if you are into 20th
century celebratory Russian nationalism. It
escapes the accidie of the conductor's approach
to the Fifth Symphony.
Economically the digital
recording sessions elided the works Svetlanov
had already recorded. In the case of these
five volumes this means that Symphony No.
3 on OCD 733 is the 1965 Melodiya recording
and is, of course, ADD rather than the predominant
DDD norm for the cycle. This leaves the way
clear for anyone who would like to offer the
first complete digital cycle but I don't see
that happening anytime soon.
This is a uniform edition
with the stylised onion-dome cover illustration
by Peter Schoenecker. Each volume will be
identified by a different tint. Discographical
details are pretty decently tackled even if
I could have wished that exact dates for the
various sessions had been given. The best
we get for the new digital series is 1991-1993.
The analogue origins of the tapes of Symphony
No. 3 is declared with enviable candour twice
over and you need not give it a second thought.
I noticed Olympia's attention
to accuracy when they call the series 'The
Complete Symphonic Works'. The two concertos
are not included. The Cello Concerto is well
known and multiply recorded including by the
world's finest cellists. Olympia already have
this work in their catalogue with the two
cello sonatas. The glorious violin concerto
used to be in the Olympia stable but toppled
under the headman's axe long ago. If you see
the disc (Olympia OCD 134) secondhand don't
hesitate. Grigori Feigin (Karkhov-born and
a David Oistrakh pupil) gives a grand performance
and he is richly recorded in stereo. Oistrakh
premiered the work and his 1940s mono recording
is to be had on Pearl - and it sounds very
good indeed from Decca shellac.
Olympia will now, I hope,
look at completing their Vainberg cycle. There
are quite a few gaps in the symphonic sequence.
I also wonder if they could be persuaded to
record the symphonies of Lev Knipper. Yuri
Shaporin's Russian nationalist Symphony of
the early 1930s has compelling claims to attention
as also does Shaporin's reputed masterwork
- the major choral/orchestral piece On
the Field of Kulikovo (the latter to words
by Alexandr Blok). Svetlanov recorded that
work on Melodiya ...... The two symphonies
of Lev Revutsky (recorded by Melodiya in the
nineteen-sixties) should be worth dusting
off as should the two piano concertos by Ivan
Dzerzhinsky.
Back to Miaskovsky … Laurels
and palms should be strewn under Olympia's
feet. When the Miaskovsky cycle is complete
it will outpoint the limited edition produced
by Records International (RI). They will take
one disc more than Jeff Joneikis's RI box
- seventeen rather than sixteen CDs. The notes
(in French and German as well as English)
are scrupulously written by Olympia's regular,
Per Skans. With such neglected music we are
greatly in Mr Skans' debt.
Francis Wilson tells me that
the plan is to issue the seventeen discs at
the rate of two a month. By the late summer
the sequence should be complete.
My suspicion is that you
will want all of these. If you would rather
be more abstemious then or would like to dip
a nervous toe in the water then go for Volumes
1 and 4 first. Watch out for the later issues
all of which I hope to review here.
Rob Barnett
Russian Federation Academic Symphony Orchestra/Evgeny
Svetlanov