Otar TAKTAKISHVILI (1924-1989)
Symphony No. 2 in C minor (1953) [44:23]
Mogrelian Songs for tenor, male voice octet and chamber orchestra (1972)
[6:28]
Gurian Songs for male vocal quartet, mixed chorus and symphony orchestra
(1971) [20:55]
State Academic Symphony Orchestra/Evgeni Svetlanov (symphony); Z Sotkilava;
Rustavi Vocal Ensemble/E Erkomayshvili; Leningrad Chamber Orchestra/composer
(Mogrelian); L Belobragina (sop); Rustavi Vocal Ensemble/E Erkomayshvili;
Academic Grand Chorus/K Ptitza; USSR TV and Radio Large Symphony Orchestra/composer
(Gurian)
rec. 1992. DDD (symphony); 1970s? AAD (Gurian; Mogrelian).
RUSSIAN DISC RDCD 00768 [72:35] 
Otar Taktakishvili is a Georgian composer we should know more about. His music
is intensely poetic and touches the listener melodically - straight from the
shoulder. He wrote many works including some light-drenched and lyrical concertos.
In this Second Symphony the composer takes us on a journey through pages of
sisyphean exertion typical of the high tensile Soviet symphony we may know
from the Boris Tchaikovsky First. He is in safe hands with Svetlanov who reliably
articulates not just the fervour of the high and valiant places but also Taktakishvili's
alma mater - a certain cantabile poetry of place and mind. The latter can
be experienced in the first movement of the Symphony at 5:52 onwards. There
is, by the way, nothing of Shostakovich in this work. If anything there is
a tang of Georgian folk music and a shading from Miaskovsky. The Vivo second
movement is a great contrast and is very much of the people with village
dances skittishly and graciously used. Then comes a long Andante which
is turbulent and epic-tragic. The writing has the redolence of the strenuously
grand brass work in the First Symphony of Balys Dvarionas. There’s less of
Shostakovich in the mix and more of Tchaikovsky and of Khachaturian. The brass
retains that refulgent blare that is the signature of the finest Russian orchestras
and which is gradually being purged much to the listeners’ impoverishment.
The recording quality of the Symphony is magnificent and will appeal to you
as it does to me for its lively vigour and vivid resonant image. The natural
decay of sound in this ideally reverberant hall is allowed to die away without
being throttled off by premature technical silences at the ends of tracks.
The tragic grandeur of the third movement bridges the by and large gentle
dances of the second movement having more in common with the grandstanding
of the first. This is a languid sorrowing hymn lofted high by optimism. At
8:00 the heavy brass and searing strings rise to new lachrymose climactic
heights. After the roaring abrasive gold of the massed horns at 09:00 there
is a curve downwards into gentle and almost filmic melancholia. Strings, harp
and solo flute end proceeding in a radiant ppp gleam from the violins.
The recordings of the Mogrelian Songs and Gurian Songs presumably
date from the 1970s although we are not told. The two works have in common
a Male Vocal Octet and in this version the composer as conductor. The Mogrelian
Songs are from folk sources and are in Georgian. The Gurian work
again uses words of the country people but in a Russian language version by
G Andreyeva.
We need to hear more of Taktakishvili. There is a Cambria CD of his Piano
Concerto No. 1. I hope that in addition to various Melodiya revivals we might
wish for Naxos will in early course turn their attention to his orchestral
music.
Rob Barnett
Lyrical and heroic music with a touch of shimmering magic.