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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Get this fine recording of a superb symphony while you can!, 8 Sep 2008
If you already know something about Myaskovsky then you will be glad to know that this, his biggest and in some ways most expressionistic work, receives a moving and intense performance from Liss and the Ural Philharmonic Orchestra/Chorus. As the other most recent up to date sound recording on DGG by Jarvi is now deleted (Miaskovsky Symphony 6) and the Kondrashin 1978 performance (Myaskovsky - Symphony No. 6 - Kirill Kondrashin) is becoming difficult to get hold of, the fact that this is so well played and conceived means that you can buy it without fear, even though the orchestra, chorus and conductor are not exactly world-famous!
Myaskovsky is not nearly enough well known in the West. His 27 symphonies represent a remarkable life's journey (1881 - 1950)of a sensitive soul and consumate craftsman from fin-de-siecle Tsarist Russia, via the Great War, the Revolutionary Wars, Stalin's Five Year Plans and the terror of the purges, the Great Patriotic War (i.e. World War 2), and final discouragement and persecution after the Zhdanov attacks on composers in 1948. Because he died "out of grace" with the authorities and without a surviving family or estate, his music fell out of the performance canon, even though it had been quite well known in the 1930's.
The 6 Symphony is in four movements: a dramatic and driven first movement; a storm-tossed scherzo with a lovely flute-led trio section; an intensely felt slow movement; and finally a bizarre "revolutionary rejoicing" in the finale (the French Revolutionary tunes "La Carmagnole" and "Ca ira" are quoted - jaunty ditties inciting the singers to bloodshed and violence), which runs slap bang into the Dies Irae and then a wailing choir that takes up a Russian Orthodox funeral chant "On the leaving of the soul from the body."
Though Soviet commentators attempted to fit the work into a framework of a symphonic poem detailing the struggles of the Bolshevik Revolution, this is clearly not the truth. The juxtaposition of cheerful calls to murder and carnage ("La Carmagnole" and "Ca ira" - though not actually sung in the finale you can find the words on the internet and see for yourself) with the Catholic and Orthodox requiem liturgical chants, followed by a peaceful epilogue, points to something beyond the immediate political exigencies of the early 1920's when the work was written.
Myaskovsky had fought during the Great War and suffered shell-shock and wounding on the Austrian Front. He was then to join the Red Army until 1921, which was also the year that his father, General Myaskovski, was murdered before his eyes on a railway platform by a pistol toting revolutionary who objected to the old man wearing the decorations and insignia of the Tsarist regime. The aunt who had brought the family up also died in a cold and bare Petrograd flat, during the great Petrograd famine.
There is enough personal material to fill a much larger symphony that this, and indeed the commentator to the Kondrashin disc mentioned above has the 6 Symphony as the "final movement" of a macro-symphony that starts with Symphony 4 and goes through a "slow movement" Symphony 5. I would go further: as there are obvious thematic sharings with the slow movement of this symphony (number 6) and with the wry and fascinating Symphony 7, I would suggest that Symphony 7 is as sort of epilogue or pendant to all this. The remarkable and very cheap Warner complete edition, conducted by Svetlanov is also available from Amazon, (Myaskovsky - Complete Symphonies and Orchestral Works). This has the alternative non-choral version of Symphony 6 extremely well recorded and played as well as all the other symphonies mentioned in this review, and I would recommend it most heartily despite the lack of sleeve notes.
If you just want to try Myaskovsky, or if you want the choral version of the symphony instead of or as well as the one on the Svetlanov set, then this recording by Liss is the one to get, even above the Kondrashin. The inclusion of the (rather difficult) Symphony 10 in a very well-played version is an added inducement to buy this disc.
Symphony 10 lasts for just over 16 minutes in this performance. It is a one-movement work inspired by the illustrations to Pushkin's "The Bronze Horseman": a lurid tale of a young man who curses the Tsar and his bronze equestrian statue in St Petersburg because he blames the draining of the swamps for the town as the cause of the great flood that has taken his beloved's life. Whether in delirium or supernatural vengeance, the statue pursues the young man to his death. Plenty of metaphorical condemnation of tyrannical authority here! This work was premiered in the West by Stokowski in 1930. It is a taxing listen but well worth getting to know.
Recordings of Myaskovsky symphonies do not last long in the record companies' lists so I advise you to get this fine disc whilst it is still available.
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