Symphony in B flat major (No. 2); Symphony No. 4 in C minor, Op. 12

'With astute confidence and pounding vigour, Valeri Polyansky commands a lucious sound and first-rate perfomance from the Russian State Symphony Orchestra.'
- The Observer

'This is a striking, and very well-recorded pair of performances, well worth the attention of lovers of Russian music who have not yet encountered the works.'
Gramophone

Sergey Taneyev's music, written in the late nineteenthcentury romantic tradition, is well-crafted, attractively scored and tuneful.

Polyansky and the Russian State Symphony Orchestra are renowned for their recordings of Russian repertoire and have made many acclaimed recordings for Chandos.

There are few recordings of these works available, making this CD an important addition to the catalogue.

The western history books are most likely to impress upon us Taneyev's reputation as the pupil who criticised his master, Tchaikovsky, for putting ballet music into a symphony, or as the musician who made Tolstoy pathologically jealous of the attention he paid the great man's wife. Soviet musicology has dwelt more upon the theoretical aspects of the composer's work, not least the influence of his huge study, Strict Counterpoint in the Convertible Style. This has meant that many earlier works which the composer was too self-critical to admit to publication - among them the Symphony in B flat on this disc - were studiously reconstructed, and recently musicologists and collectors have been reassessing the legacy of Taneyev's music.

Taneyev's Second Symphony in B flat was composed 1877-78, and though he was always at loggerheads with his professor, Tchaikovsky, over the level of abstraction permissible in symphonic form, this work shows the last sustained vestiges of Tchaikovsky's influence.

For many years, Taneyev's Symphony in C minor (1901) has stood alone as a massive pillar to his rigorous contrapuntal art. It must have puzzled many of its listeners with its dense orchestration and declamatory manner. It is, to be sure, a one off, and much is to be gained by hearing it in the company of an earlier symphony.

Taneyev's compositional style is characterised by its fastidious craftsmanship, the composer's inclination to contrapuntal techniques and his adept handling of large-scale forms. A lone figure in late nineteenth-century Russian music, he was openly contemptuous of contemporary nationalist composers and his work owes little to Russian tradition.