Dmitri Borisovich Kabelevsky (1904-1987) is long remembered mostly as an innovative pedagogue and the one who sought to upgrade the curriculum so as to enhance music education for the youth. And like Kodaly of Hungary, Kabalevsky was something of a musical, cultural ambassador. As a composer, he wrote many pieces for children (for examples, the First Cello Concerto, Third Piano Concerto, a Violin Concerto and a song cycle "School Years"). His operas in particular were well known in Soviet Russia while about a few of his orchestral works had some currency in the West, including the Comedians, overture to Colas Breugnon, and to a lesser extent, the Second Symphony.

After the successful premiere of Myaskovsky's Sixth Symphony, performed on May 4th, 1924 by Nikolai Golovanov & the Bolshoi Theatre Orchestra and Chorus, critics and the audience had essentially two types of reactions toward this ultimately moving score. On the one hand, many deemed the work as the end of the musical era developed & cherished by among Russia's foremost composers: Glinka, Dargomyzhsky, Rubinstein, the Russian Five (Balakirev, Mussorgsky, Borodin, Rimsky-Korsakov, & Cui) and, Tchaikovsky. And that tradition was carried on by the likes of Glazunov, Tanayev, Lyadov, Arensky. However, by the time Myaskovsky composed the Sixth, many of the composers either passed-on, emigrated, or stopped writing prolifically, especially in symphonic genres.

Nikolai Myaskovsky was born on April 20, 1881 in Novogeorgiyevsk. His father was a military engineer whose assignments took him to various cities in Russia. The family finally settled in St. Petersburg, where Nikolai enrolled in the Military Academy. He studied at the Academy of Military Engineering from 1888-1802. After graduating from the Academy, Myaskovsy served as a military engineer in Moscow where he met and began music studies with Reinhold Gliere. In 1804 his army reassignment sent him St. Petersburg.

After composing the successful Symphony No 18 in C op 42 of 1937, Myaskovsky turned his attention to his former world of the army, where he had always been aware of the limitations of Russian musical repertoire for military bands. For some time he had felt a strong desire to propagate classical music among the Red Army Bands.

While still engaged on the vast canvas of the Sixth Symphony, commenced in 1919 but not completed until 1923, Myaskovsky began work on his Seventh Symphony which he nished in 1922. In many respects the symphonies are interwoven and represent very different fruits stemming from the same creative act.

Nikolay Yakovlevich Myaskovsky (1881-1950), the Musical Conscience of Moscow, has been deemed by many as the greatest of Soviet symphonists. And listening to his symphonies, it is not hard to see why. Hardly free from the problems with some of the turgidness, redundancy, and plainness in the writing, his music is real stuff, hardly facile, and honest in its communicative utterance. He was indeed a Twentieth Century Piotr Illyich Tchaikovsky, not as an epigone, but as a man not afraid to express himself and at the same time allow his music to remain accessible.

Miaskovsky's Second is a work of gloomy caste with a gaunt and protesting character you could cut with a knife. The basic 'colour card' spans the gamut of subdued colours. Rhythmically it tends towards reflection offset by a tramping snappy quick-march of a pattern typical of this composer. The overall effect mixes the Tchaikovsky of Symphonies 5 and Manfred, Rachmaninov's The Crag and Isle of the Dead with a hint of Scriabin's Symphonies 2 and 3. The orchestra is ample of girth: triple woodwind, 4 trumpets, 6 horns, 3 trombones, 2 bass tubas and timps. This is a symphony formed from swarthy, hammer-head clouds, anvil strokes, sheets of rain and electric storms

Right from the start Liss makes it clear that this is going to be a gripping and urgent account of the Myaskovsky Sixth Symphony. It’s a reading of elemental spontaneity seemingly swept along by the fire or poetry of the moment. That flame, in the first movement, can produce moments that teeter close to a gabble. One wonders whether the young Golovanov produced similar results for his premiere at the Bolshoi on 4 May 1924.

Following a concert performance in October 1970 Jascha Horenstein went into the studio with the London Philharmonic to record Mahler’s Fourth Symphony as one of the first recordings for the then new Classics For Pleasure bargain label produced by John Boyden. The result was musically deeply satisfying though the sound on the original LP left much to be desired. This led to a poor one-star review being enshrined in the very next Penguin Guide and that must surely have contributed to killing the release on the shelves so it was never considered among the recommended versions for this work.

In many ways Ma Vlast seems like a problematic work. It is full of patriotism and conductors often choose to exploit its grandeur. Such approaches bring a risk of heaviness. Nikolaus Harnoncourt managed to employ slow tempi and achieve a deeper look without a trace of ponderousness, but his feat was remarkable and difficult to emulate. (Harnoncourt takes 83 minutes compared to 73 for Smetacek, a huge difference.) So Smetacek's decision to go for abandon and delight seems wise. The Czech Phil adds volumes to the treat, with a warm, juicy tone that is almost as enjoyable in this repertoire as the Vienna Phil. In addition, Supraphon's sound is splendid, about as good as early digital gets.

Stravinsky - »Le Scare du Printemps« • »Mavra«
(Junge Deutsche Philharmonie • Göteborgs Symfoniker - Peter Eötvös)
Classical | EAC | FLAC, IMG+CUE, LOG | Covers | 1CD, 294 MB
Label: Budapest Music Center Records | Catalog Number: BMC CD 118 | TT: 60'56''

Hungarian conductor and composer Peter Eötvös is known for his proficiency in Stravinsky's "primitivist" works; his Hungaraton recording of both 1917 and 1923 versions of Les Noces is viewed in some quarters as a watershed album in Stravinsky studies; university classes have been based around it and the insight the album provides into Stravinsky's working methods. That was made in 1988; since then Eötvös has not had much opportunity to return to Stravinsky, working closely instead with Pierre Boulez, the Ensemble Modern, and promoting his own compositions..

Gustav Mahler - Symphony No.10 ed. Cooke (BBC National Orchestra of Wales - Mark Wigglesworth)
Classical | EAC | FLAC, IMG+CUE, LOG | Covers | 1CD, 313 MB
Label: BBC Music | Catalog Number: Volume II Number 12 | TT: 74'23''

This is unlike Rattle, or Harding; it is a remarkably Austro-German-Czech-styled performance, with more of a Central European than a Western European character to it, and with the big structural line dominant over everything. Imagine the Vaclav Neumann recording of the lone First Movement, and you know generally how that movement is played here (which is terrific); and Wigglesworth carries that approach consistently to the end of this, Mahler's most otherwordly, and perhaps greatest, symphony. The difference from Neumann (who was a very great Mahler conductor on the late symphonies 6-10, and great on the ones before) is that Wigglesworth's approach is a bit more on the dramatic side, and is a bit less on the sensuous side. However, if you like Neumann in the late Mahler symphonies (and I think he does a better job with them than anyone else, actually), you'll love this performance. It is chilling. (Not cold – chilling, like scary.)
Eric Zuesse

Evgeny Svetlanov - Munchner Philharmoniker - Wagner Abend 1988
Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg • Lohengrin • Tannhauser • Tristan und Isolde • Siegfried • Die Walkure
Classical | EAC | FLAC, IMG+CUE, LOG | Covers | 2CD, 412 MB
Label: Weitblick | Catalog Number: SSS0090-2 | TT: 1:34'24''

Svetlanov, Munchner Philharmoniker under the domination of Celibidache and Wagner. How miraculos this combination was! It might be never have been planned from a fixed idea, with the intension and procedure to realize this performance might be not so serious an event. However, as a result, an outstanding performance, containing good balance between the orthodoxy at the maximum level and the open minded power was accomplished. It may be called excellent Wagner with collective powerful sounds without hesitation bu one of the mist symbolic German orchestras. It can be realized paradoxically only by this couple. This Wagner seems to be what we can see from the vivid viewpoint of the orchestra members who greatly enjoyed their own music without any stresses different from the usual performances

Prokofiev - Leitenant Kije • Scythian Suite / Khachaturian - Gayaneh Suite (Hermann Scherchen)
Classical | EAC | FLAC, IMG+CUE, LOG | Covers | 1CD, 276 MB
Label: Westminster | Catalog Number: 471 265-2 | TT: 62'51''

Scherchen fans of a certain age will fondly recall the Prokofiev in its original incarnation as Westminster LP WL 5091, its murky brown cover depicting a fierce, fleeing horseman pursued by turquoise-colored flying beasties. That cover illustration, this time with the pursuers in red and the background a more legible mustard, will bring on fits of nostalgia, not only for the cover art but for idiomatic performances of wondrous barbarism. The Scythian Suite, salvaged from a ballet score rejected by Diaghilev, is an early work covered with fingerprints of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring. Indeed, sections such as the opening of the “Night” episode sound like outtakes from that scandalous model. Imitative or not, the young composer produced a score whose relentless drive and brilliant orchestration should be heard more often. Scherchen launches into the opening orchestral splash like a wild man, gives the horn whoops of the final movement the piquant flavor they need, and is deliciously atmospheric in the aforementioned “Night”..

Yoel Levi’s Mahler has been a mixed bag: marvelous versions of Symphonies Nos. 4 and 6, a good but not great No. 1, and a dull 5 and 7. The Second is one of the great ones, though, a performance of the type that Bruno Walter or George Szell would have appreciated. It will not appeal to those who need their Mahler to sweat blood, and Levi is not the kind of conductor who makes his interpretive points through attention-getting tempo adjustments and exaggerated string portamentos. Rather, his personal touch reveals itself in scrupulous attention to dynamics, care with instrumental balances, and finely honed ensemble. Such an approach always risks blandness, if only because the result can sound effortless just when the music needs to express tension and a sense of strain; but when it works, as here, it can offer more sheer musical satisfaction and staying power than many more demonstrative efforts.