Nikolai MIASKOVSKY (1881-1950)
Symphony No. 27 (1950) [35.35]
Cello Concerto (1944) [31.37]
Alexander Ivashkin (cello)
Russian State SO/Valeri Polyansky
rec Dec 2001, Grand Hall, Moscow Conservatory, DDD
CHANDOS CHAN 10025 [67.23]

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Miaskovsky’s colour-range here runs a warm gamut from sable to amber. This music surely speaks of the triumph of the quiet spirit. The canvas is enriched with the aural equivalent of lustrous oils traced back to Tchaikovsky 5 and Rachmaninov 2. The contours are not jagged but softened - always calming and tender in the manner of Brahms Second Symphony. Only in the finale presto ma non troppo does the composer break the mood with brash rodomontade: bustling and buzzing with the celebratory zeal of Tchaikovsky's Fifth and the finales of Rachmaninov's First Symphony and Glazunov's Eighth.

The mood of the two adagios of the Twenty-Seventh Symphony carries over into the Cello Concerto. The concerto sings eloquent and elegiac; a convincing performance. with the cello well forward in the soundstage. There is no shortage of alternative recordings now but this version holds up very well against the most illustrious competition.

This disc marks the latest Miaskovsky release from a major company. Last month DG-Universal issued a top version of the Sixth Symphony. Promised from Marco Polo is a coupling of Symphonies 24 and 25. With Olympia releasing the complete cycle of twenty-seven under Svetlanov and a haphazard legacy of Melodiya, Unicorn and other symphony recordings issued in the 1980s and 1990s Miaskovsky is beginning, at long last, to come into his own.

Rob Barnett

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