Myaskovsky: Symphony 16 & 19

"The Sixteenth (1935/36) is important mainly as a historical document. This is Myaskovsky's Aviation Symphony, its slow movement a funeral march inspired by the crash of the outsize Soviet aircraft, the Tupolev ANT-20, also known as the "Maxim Gorky". The (necessarily upbeat) finale quotes from one of the composer's own mass songs, "There fly the planes" ("Letyat samolyoty"). Popular with both ideologues and the public, it shows his attempt to find his own ennobling take on the official dogma of socialist realism. Prokofiev commented with surprising warmth on "the beauty of the material, the mastery of its presentation and the overall harmonious construction - all this is genuinely great art". While this may be special pleading on behalf of a friend, a few weird harmonic corners survive to pep up the basically 19th-century formulae. Svetlanov gives Myaskovsky's long lines almost too much space, his orchestra's authentic sonority captured in a typically blowsy acoustic.

The concise Nineteenth (1939) was composed for the 21st anniversary of the foundation of the Red Army whose band had championed Myaskovsky's previous symphony in transcription. The style is even more approachable though without much conventional heroic rhetoric. Once again the dourly nostalgic slow movement, kicking off with a phrase reminiscent of the "Skye Boat Song", carries most weight. A sonically superior Rozhdestvensky recording is still in the lists but Myaskovsky mavens will stick with Svetlanov."
(Gramophone)

In partnership with UK-based independent label Olympia, Alto is pleased to present the latest volume in the first complete recorded retrospective of Soviet composer Nikolai Myaskovsky's complete orchestral works, one of the last great recording projects undertaken by Russian conductor Evgeny Svetlanov prior to his death.