Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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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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5.0 out of 5 stars
A Sixth to equal any ever recorded plus a bonus, 28 Aug 2009
Dmitri Liss and the Ural Philharmonic Orchestra are not names most are going to mention when asked what performers project the most Russian-ness in music emanating from that nation, but -- on the basis of this recording -- maybe they should be.
The Symphony No. 6 of Nikolai Myasksovksy (1881-1950) has had a handful of recordings over the years. The composer, the son of a Russian Army office born near Warsaw but always considered Russian, was born before the revolution and became, by some accounts, between the greatest and fourth-greatest composer of the Soviet era depending on judgments made about Shostakovich, Prokofiev and Khachaturian. He turned to music later in life than most composers but still had prolific output, publishing 26 symphonies including the two on this recording. An instructor at the Moscow Conservatory, his students inlcuded the aforementioned Khachaturian and Kabalevsky.
The Symphony No. 6, "a painfully and profoundly felt work," according to the notes to this issue, is the composer's lengthiest work in the genre, running to 61 minutes in this recording. The notes suggest it is the "most significant Russian symphony between Tchaikovsky's 'Pathetique' and Shostakovich's Fourth Symphony." It was premiered in 1924 and has also been characterized as the first work of Soviet realism, the government-defined tag given to compositions the musical Politburo liked in the Soviet era. Since no one ever figured out what Soviet realism in music actually was, we'll have to continue guessing whether the Symphony 6 was a projection of it.
What we do know is it is the composer's most famous and more diligent work, given to moments of great passion in four movements. It has often been called Mahlerian but I don't think the current recording says that. Under Liss, the Ural Philharmonic makes this music the epitome of late Russian passion, I believe. While other recordings, especially those by Kondrashin and Svetlanov (I subtract the Jarvi recording since he is, like usual, too international in this music), make more of the Mahlerian ethos, what I hear in this version is Tchaikovksy brought into the 20th century.
This becomes most apparent in the flowing lyrical sweep of the Andante and continues into the martial rhythm that kicks off the finale. The new-found Russian lyricism return in development for woodwind figures that maintain the thrust before the return of the main theme that turns into a Rachmaninoff-like closing after the brief choral interlude.
The Symphony 10 is another dramatic minor key edifice on a much smaller scale. Its 16 minute duration is almost totally dramatic, opening with brass-dominant flourishes that move unrelentingly for more than 10 minutes before quiet briefly ensues. Sure enough, the drama is back in a few minutes and takes you through to the hyperbolic conclusion.
While the Symphony 6 is clearly a masterpiece, 10 is a symphony that could've been composed by any of two dozen 20th century composers. It reminded me of film music from the 1950s and the ostinato theme was evocative of, in tenor if not exactly in note, music from Howard Hawks' "The Thing From Another Planet."
But it is Symphony 6, and not 10, that you should be interested in here, for this is a substantial 20th century symphony rarely played on the concert stage whose exposition is outstanding in this reading. The 2006 recording is modern and digital and the Ural Philharmonic plays well for Liss, who leads as if the future of Russian music was on the line. Warner Classics' outstanding package includes seven pages of interesting notes and the Russian text of the choral section plus an English translation. This is a treat for anyone that enjoys Russian music or wants to hear a masterpiece off the beaten path.
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