Symphony No. 16 in F major, Op.39, Konstantin Ivanov
Symphony No. 17 in G sharp minor, Op. 41, Evgeny Svetlanov
Symphony No. 21 in F sharp minor, Op. 51, Konstantin Ivanov
Symphony No. 22 in B minor, Op. 54 'Symphony-Ballad ', Evgeny Svetlanov
Symphony No. 25 in D flat major, Op. 69, Evgeny Svetlanov
Symphony No. 27 in C minor, Op. 85, Evgeny Svetlanov

USSR State Symphony Orchestra

Firma Melodiya presents a set of selected symphonies by Nikolai Myaskovsky.

This composer’s music is not widely popular today, but he belongs in the group of Russia’s brightest music talents of the first half of the 20th century. His music organically combines old and new, traditions of classical music culture and keenness of expressionism, high tragedy of Beethoven and Tchaikovsky and boldness of avant-garde music. Dmitri Shostakovich considered Mayskovsky “the major symphonist after Mahler”, and Sergei Prokofiev wrote that Myaskovsky “was somewhat more a philosopher – his music is wise, passionate, gloomy and self-absorbed”.

Symphony was the most important genre to the composer. His twenty-seven symphonies, composed over a 40 year period, are a sort of personal diary, reflecting the complicated and winding path of his artistic evolution. At the same time, they are a music chronicle of the age, a response of the big artist to the most significant historic and cultural events of the time.

The set includes six symphonies from Myaskovsky’s later period (1935 to 1950) – Nos 16, 17, 21, 22, 25 and 27 – performed by the USSR State Academic Symphony Orchestra conducted by the outstanding Evgeny Svetlanov (the only conductor in the world to record all of Myaskovsky’s symphonies) and his predecessor in the State Orchestra, Konstantin Ivanov, one of the major representatives of the Soviet conducting school.