Rubinstein: Symphony No. 1 / Ivan The Terrible

Anton Rubinstein's first symphony dates from 1850, a period in his life when he was consciously and resolutely eschewing any Russian nationalist influences on his music. It stands therefore firmly in the Central European/German oriented musical tradition and if there could be said to be any well-known composer influencing this work, it would probably be Mendelssohn.

If Mendelssohn is an influence, however, it's in the sense that the music sounds derivative of - rather than inspired by - the greater composer and Rubinstein's symphony is a ploddingly old-fashioned sounding piece for 1850. What really strikes you about this music is the extreme poverty of invention, particularly in the outer movements where there is nary a musical motif or melody to capture your interest in the eminently conventional symphonic argument. The harmony is pedestrian and rhythmically the music is stodgy and laboured. Rubinstein's orchestration is very ordinary as well, with little evidence of a gift for - or even an interest in - colour or effect. If the work had been composed in the German lands that are its spiritual home, it would probably have been labelled "Kapellmeister music" - the description accurately reflects its workmanlike and professional characteristics but even so is perhaps unfair to the second and third rank composers who actually were writing similarly competent and unadventurous but more memorably charming music than we have here.

The `Musical Portrait - Ivan the Terrible' (also known as `Ivan IV') is a later work, hailing from 1869 when the Mighty Handful had started to make their mark on the Russian musical scene. They were immediately set at odds with Rubinstein's Eurocentric musical conservatory and the partisan polemics that followed from both sides dominated the St Petersburg cultural scene for some years to come. Nevertheless, Rubinstein's work does seem to reflect an engagement with the nationalist music school and an attempt to introduce some overtly Russian elements in his music. It was said (by Rimsky-Korsakov) that Borodin expressed approval for some passages in this work but to this listener it is as unmemorable and workaday as the symphony that had preceded it 19 years earlier. It plods on for around 17 minutes and the portrait of the Tsar painted by Rubinstein is of a rather obsessively lugubrious figure, reflected in the generally dark orchestral colours; this might be accurate historically but there is little suggestion of Ivan being "terrible" unless it's that he was a terrible bore.

The sound quality and the performances are almost as uninspired as the music. I don't doubt that a top class orchestra and record label could make these works sound better than they do here - but the music is the main problem with this CD and I seriously do doubt that any performers could make the symphony worth your money or your listening time. The recordings were originally issued on Marco Polo and Naxos seem to be slowly re-releasing that Rubinstein symphony cycle under their own banner: this is volume one and doesn't reflect the composer at his best; it might have been better to have started the reissues with one of the later, more fluent and attractive symphonies such as the fifth or sixth if they wanted to encourage new listeners to follow the cycle. As it is, I can't really recommend this disc on any level.