100 years of Russian Classical Music, from Rubinstein to Prokofiev.
Well, we’ve come a long way. Almost 100 years, to be exact, with some leaps and skips here and there, and there’s obviously plenty we didn’t get to. If you haven’t been following along, you can reach the entire series … Continue reading The Russian Symphony Series: A Wrap-up
performed by The London Symphony Orchestra under Valery Gergiev, or as below I cannot say that I deliberately chose this theme. It was born in me and clamoured for expression. The music matured within me. It filled my soul. What … Continue reading Prokofiev Symphony no. 5 in B-flat, Op. 100
performed by the London Symphony Orchestra under Valery Gergiev movement 2 movement 3 movement 4 So we’re back… for the same symphony, just eighteen years later, as in, after his fifth and sixth symphonies, but we’re going to address the real revisit (I originally … Continue reading Revisit: Prokofiev Symphony no. 4, op. 112
performed by the London Symphony Orchestra under Valery Gergiev, or in a version below with the Mariinsky Theatre Orchestra Here we are again at another revisit, from the days when I (still) didn’t know how to talk about music, but more importantly … Continue reading Revisit: Prokofiev Symphony no. 4, op. 47
performed by the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra under Marriss Jansons One of the largest symphonies in the standard repertoire, along with most of Mahler, bits of Bruckner, and some Shostakovich (but this is his longest). This recording comes in at around … Continue reading Shostakovich Symphony no. 7 in C major, op. 60 ‘Leningrad’
performed (this time) by the Scottish National Orchestra under Neeme Järvi or below with the younger Paavo Järvi and the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Another revisit! I will admit I didn’t quite get this piece or Shostakovich at the time of writing the previous article on … Continue reading Revisit: Shostakovich Symphony no. 1 in Fm, op. 10
performed by the USSR State Symphony Orchestra under Evgeny Svetlanov (as with the others) (for a version with the choral part, see below) This is a tough nut to crack. Size does matter, but anyone who’s listened to something like Mahler 3 or … Continue reading Myaskovsky Symphony no. 6 in E flat minor, op. 23
performed by the USSR State Symphony Orchestra under Evgeny Svetlanov playlist of the entire work here Yesterday we talked a bit about Myaskovsky’s early life and his second symphony. Today we’ll talk a bit more about his life and his … Continue reading Revisit: Myaskovsky Symphony no. 3 in Am, op. 15
performed by the USSR State Academic Symphony Orchestra under Evgeny Svetlanov or the same conductor with the Orchestre National de France in a studio recording here So this must be by far the most obscure work in everything that we’ve talked … Continue reading Sergei Lyapunov: Symphony no. 2
In case you didn’t realize, this topic is nothing I can speak about from personal experience, nor is it anything I really know much about. It is also an incredibly large, complicated, and even sensitive topic, about a very dark … Continue reading Music in the Soviet Era
performed by the Columbia Symphony under the composer’s baton To think that this is the first Stravinsky piece we’ve touched in our more-than-two-years here… better late than never. For those of you who think of Stravinsky as a wild, imaginative … Continue reading Igor Stravinsky: Symphony in Eb major, op. 1
performed by the Philadelphia Orchestra under Riccardo Muti or here, by the Radio Sinfonie Orchester Frankfurt under Eliahu Inbal, who (and which recording) I like muchly, especially in the final movement We’ve finally gotten around to something other than Scriabin’s … Continue reading Scriabin Symphony no. 1, op. 26
performed live by (again) the USSR Ministry of Culture Symphony Orchestra under Gennady Rozhdestvensky, or in a very nice performance below by the Amsterdam Concertgebouw Orchestra (perhaps before they were ‘Royal’?) under Vladimir Ashkenazy This, this other terrible first. The … Continue reading Rachmaninoff Symphony no. 1 in D minor, op. 13
While I felt Arensky’s symphony last week had its shining moments (particularly the fourth movement) and Glazunov’s seemed a very ambitious young work, the far-less-known (in the West) Vasily Kalinnikov brings us a symphony number one that is tightly constructed, … Continue reading Vasily Kalinnikov: Symphony no. 1 in G minor
performed by the USSR Ministry of Culture Symphony Orchestra under Gennady Rozhdestvensky “[Tchaikovsky] also knew my Third Symphony, which is dedicated to him. Much in it found his approval and, at his request, I often played the scherzo of the … Continue reading Alexander Glazunov: Symphony no. 3 in D, op. 33
performed by the Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra under Stanislav Vavrinek or here by the people sourced for this video (USSR Radio & TV something?) “In his youth Arensky did not escape some influence from me; later the influence came from … Continue reading Arensky Symphony No. 1 in B minor, op. 4
performed by the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra under Gennady Rozhdestvensky (or in the other recording below by Concertgebouw under Karel Mark Chichon) Heaven forbid! Do not touch it; alter nothing. Your modulations are neither extravagant nor faulty. Your artistic instinct … Continue reading Borodin Symphony no. 2 in B minor
performed by the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra under Gennady Rozhdestvensky At this point, it’s incredible to believe the blog has been going for more than two years. I have been planning for some time to get around to revisiting some … Continue reading Revisit: Borodin Symphony No. 1 in E flat major
performed by the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra under Bernard Haitink “although it is in many ways very immature, yet fundamentally it has more substance and is better than any of my other more mature works.” So, here we are at arguably … Continue reading Tchaikovsky Symphony no. 1, op. 13, ‘Winter Dreams’
or Influential People: Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky By now, we’ve gone through enough of the history of the previous pieces and composers that we kind of already have an understanding of the climate in which the rest of the composers … Continue reading Tchaikovsky and the Composing Circles
performed by the Gothenburg Symphony Ochestra under Neeme Järvi or as below by the Moscow Radio Symphony Orchestra under Boris Khaikin mvt. 2 mvt. 3 mvt. 4 Opus one! If you read Tuesday’s Wikipedia-heavy article about Rimsky-Korsakov, you’ll hopefully remember … Continue reading Rimsky-Korsakov Symphony no. 1 in Em, op. 1
Fugue for Thought 