March 2025 - Russian Symphony March Madness!

[foxandpeng]

Color me not shocked, but my summary judgment, based on intuition, was correct: Mosolov's Symphony in E Major conducted by Titov with the St. Petersburg State Academic Capella Symphony Orchestra



Electric, exciting, vibrant, vivacious. It has life!

I also appreciate the Wartime Music version of this Mosolov symphony. I have liked all of the series that I've heard so far, mind, but the Mosolov too.

[Karl Henning]

My listening was interrupted, so I've come back to this, and how nice to find a live execution (as it were)

[Karl Henning]

No performer info:

[Elgarian Redux]

@Elgarian Redux

The more I listen to Antar, the more it is becoming one of my favourite symphonies. It is so inventively and beautifully orchestrated!

I know!! And Butt's version is exquisite.
And the tune goes round and round my head.
And the programme is so imaginatively conceived!

And I'm in love with the Magical Queen of Palmyra!

[ChamberNut]

Today's selection! Quite a ride!

Popov

Symphony No. 1, Op. 7

London Symphony Orchestra
Botstein

[Cato]

Today's selection! Quite a ride!

Popov

Symphony No. 1, Op. 7

London Symphony Orchestra
Botstein

WOW! What a coincidence!  I revisited the Popov Symphony #1 yesterday!

It struck me early (very early!) this morning that somebody might have been neglected this month!     


Borodin: Symphony #1

(links to the other 3 movements should appear on the side)



Symphony #2: (links on the side)

And there is a partial Symphony #3, two movements completed by Glazunov:

[hopefullytrusting]

Alexander Nemtin's Symphony No. 2 conducted by Gennady Provatorov with the Kharkov Symphony Orchestra:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAQX4DibrrA

That a recording of this exists online is a testament to the power of the internet. Nemtin might be the one true disciple of Scriabin's Mysterium. This really is an oddball piece - to call it a hodgepodge would not be an insult. Just as Scriabin tried to capture his whole universe in a song is also what Nemtin is trying to do, and doing that will always make the work uneven. I will say that he is fairly successful in this endeavor - the piece doesn't feel disconnected because the connective link is the composer themselves - like any good prophet, they have offered themselves up as a sacrifice to truth (artistic integrity).

The recording, itself, is a bit flat, rigid, and stiff, but that does not ultimately, in my opinion, distract from the power of the work.

High recommendation.

[Cato]

Alexander Nemtin's Symphony No. 2 conducted by Gennady Provatorov with the Kharkov Symphony Orchestra:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAQX4DibrrA


That a recording of this exists online is a testament to the power of the internet. Nemtin might be the one true disciple of Scriabin's Mysterium.

This really is an oddball piece - to call it a hodgepodge would not be an insult. Just as Scriabin tried to capture his whole universe in a song is also what Nemtin is trying to do, and doing that will always make the work uneven. I will say that he is fairly successful in this endeavor - the piece doesn't feel disconnected because the connective link is the composer themselves - like any good prophet, they have offered themselves up as a sacrifice to truth (artistic integrity).

The recording, itself, is a bit flat, rigid, and stiff, but that does not ultimately, in my opinion, distract from the power of the work.

High recommendation.

Yes, Alexander Nemtin's works need to be officially recorded by good orchestras!

Where is his First Symphony?  Are there others beyond #2?

Considering that Wikipedia has room for pages and pages of nonsense, it is astonishing that there is no page for him!

[Cato]

For today: Russian Orientalism via Alexander Tcherepnin's Symphony #3!

[hopefullytrusting]

Was looking for something else, and then I came across this.

Glinka's Symphony on Two Russian Themes conducted by Alexander Gauk (the person I was searching) with the USSR State Symphony Orchestra:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOJX5cQiO8g

It's Glinka, so you pretty much can't go wrong, but this piece does raise an interesting genre argument - Glinka classes it as a symphony, but the recording classes it as a symphonic poem? The piece is delightful - the themes are very Russian, easy to detect (easy to follow and hear). The music is bouncy and buoyant, like rollicking through a county fair. The recording is superb (the conductor is first rate as is the orchestra, again, and this might just be me, but nationalistic music, and very few are more national than Glinka, should be played by nationalistic orchestras).

High recommendation.

[ChamberNut]

Yesterday's and today's selections! Was too busy to post yesterday.

Both absolutely splendid works and performances! Both highly recommended.

Prokofiev

Symphony No. 7 in C sharp minor, Op. 131



Kalinnikov

Symphony No. 2 in A major

[hopefullytrusting]

If you didn't think that YouTube has more than demonstrated its value, then this should put you over the top:

Oleg Yanchenko's Symphony No. 3 conducted by Valery Polyansky leading the Minstry of Culture Symphony Orchestra (1983 - introduced by Anna Chekhova):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRLWn6e0taU

I simply cannot believe we even have access to this.

The symphony, itself, is choral with interesting instrumental augmentations - it uses the organ and also Belorussian "folk" instruments, which already indicates that it is going to sound quite different than most symphonies you have encountered. It's overall harmonic drive would be classed by western audiences as dissonance, but that would be missing the influence (the affect) of folk music, usually more vocally dependent, and thus having a more flexible understanding of what may or may not be dissonance.

The orchestration is dense, rich, and thick, and its use of bass is right up my alley, and the organ's appearance is magically. The piece was composed in 1982, and I feel that year is correct - it feels like something that would have come out at that time - it is disparate and fragmentary aka "postmodern". I know that I am missing something significant here, as I cannot speak the language, but, unlike most opera that I listen to - the words feel as if they have actual meaning here, so I may endeavor to uncover that at some point.

The overall mood is somber throughout, but at many moments feels ritualistic (but that might also be me exoticizing, as the folk elements are very foreign to me, and they become more dominant as we move through the work). There is something creeping, lurking inside the music - like it feels at points, like this could be the soundtrack to a horror film. I love how it ends (don't know how to express it appropriately, but it is very, very fitting).

Highest recommendation.

[foxandpeng]

Yesterday's and today's selections! Was too busy to post yesterday.

Both absolutely splendid works and performances! Both highly recommended.

Prokofiev

Symphony No. 7 in C sharp minor, Op. 131



Kalinnikov

Symphony No. 2 in A major

Both score highly in this household!

[hopefullytrusting]

This will be my last contribution to this thread, as my birthday is on the 30th, so I will spending the weekend offline, and I saved a quite a banger for last, once again highlight that YouTube is the greatest website, bar none.

Gennady Vorobyov's (1918-1939) Symphony in C Minor (1937-1939; completed by Nikolai Peiko):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J3pmX6cYvWI

It opens with such mournful, longing (I wonder if he knew his death was upcoming, I suspect it was - he died of typhus). Interleaved, of course - just like Schubert - are sprigs and sprouts of joyful exuberance. There is also a distinctly almost "oriental" sound to the music, but, ironically, it reminds me more of Copland than anyone else (the foreign but not quite so foreign).

There is a great use of silene throughout (in my field, we might declaim it as the mastery of the negative/white space, recognizing that the both the background and foreground are needed to experience phenomena fully. There is this eager playfulness, almost rollicking (reminds of a sleigh bells), but it always restrained, a bounded freedom.

The recoding is from 2011 with conductor, Maurice Yaklashkin and the Chuvash State Symphony Capella. Spring motifs "spring" about, alongside folk tales being regaled. Like Shostakovich's Symphony 11, it has an extremely impressive, and loud (boisterous) percussion section, and those are never not fun.

This does not feel like a first work, and I will admit I didn't look it up, but this might be his only work that saw the light of day. And what an auspicious way to begin, by getting the most difficult composing task out of the way first. He is serious though, no doubt, and wants to be taken seriously. I often wonder how one so young could even get a symphony played by a modern orchestra (I imagine being able to hear the music, textually, helps out a lot here - I cannot do that).

I will say you can tell where Vorobyo stopped, and Peiko begins. Vorobyo is closer to Mussorgsky, while Peiko is in similar begins (it happens in the final movement (not surpisingly), but Peiko is an able, capable, functional orchestra but he lacks the punch, the conviction of Voroybyo, which makes sense s this isn't his symphony, but he did a good job brining this to fruition (ha Wagner-feel/style).

High recommendation.

[Karl Henning]

Still s few days to squeeze in some madness!

[Karl Henning]

[Karl Henning]

Perfect time to revisit this recent purchase:

[Cato]

I am on the road and have had no time to hear anything, but maybe tomorrow morning, I will have a chance to hear one of these:

Still a few days to squeeze in some madness!

[Mapman]

Stravinsky: Symphony in 3 Movements
Rattle: CBSO

[ChamberNut]

My final entry for this year's madness!! And indeed, the coda of this symphony does feel like that descent into the abyss!

Rachmaninov

Symphony No. 1 in D minor, Op. 13