Myaskovsky: Symphony no 16

Day 277

Myaskovsky: Symphony no 16

USSR Symphony Orchestra

Evgeny Svetlanov 

I was aware of the name Myaskovsky as the author of a large number of symphonies (there are 23 in all) but I was not aware of having heard any of his music. I picked this symphony at random. It was written in 1935-6 and has the nickname the Aviation Symphony as it is supposed to be connected in some way with an air crash that had happened recently in Moscow. The funeral march (3rd movement) is said to be written in commemoration of the victims, thought there is apparently little evidence that this is in fact the case.

If yesterday's music by Schreker took me by surprise this symphony was very much as I expected it to be. Bombastic at times with some lyrical material but with nothing too challenging for a work of the 1930s. It occupies a place somewhere between Glazunov and Prokofiev but without the latter composer's astringency.  The middle movements impressed me more than the outer movements, which did seem to be in the accepted 'painting by number' Soviet style. The second movement was an attractive scherzo - though the trio was rather trite and the funeral march third movement did have a real weight to it. But at the moment I can't see myself rushing out to buy the CD set of all of the Myaskovsky symphonies. I suspect that it would be as case of hunting through acres of the routine to find moments of real inspiration.