Nikolai Myaskovsky - Symphony No. 6, Op. 23 (1923)

Nikolai Yakovlevich Myaskovsky or Miaskovsky or Miaskowsky (Russian: Никола́й Я́ковлевич Мяско́вский; Polish: Nikołaj Jakowlewicz Miaskowski; 20 April 1881 – 8 August 1950), was a Russian and Soviet composer. He is sometimes referred to as the “Father of the Soviet Symphony“. Myaskovsky was awarded the Stalin Prize five times, more than any other composer. Stung by the many accusations in the Soviet press of “individualism, decadence, pessimism, formalism and complexity“, Myaskovsky wrote to Asafiev in 1940, “Can it be that the psychological world is so foreign to these people?“ When somebody described Zhdanov’s decree against “formalism“ to him as “historic“, he is reported to have retorted “Not historic – hysterical“. Shostakovich, who visited Myaskovsky on his deathbed, described him afterwards to the musicologist Marina Sabinina as “the most noble, the most modest of men“. Mstislav Rostropovich, for whom Myaskovsky wrote his Second Cello Sonata late in life, described him as “a humorous man, a sort of real Russian intellectual, who in some ways resembled Turgenev“. Symphony No. 6, Op. 23 (1923) 1. Poco largamente, ma allegro - Allegro feroce 2. Presto tenebroso - Andante moderato (22:30) 3. Andante appassionato - Molto più appassionato e rubato - Ancora più animato - Andante sostenuto, con tenerezza e gran espressione (31:26) 4. Allegro molto vivace (46:32) Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra conducted by Neeme Järvi The Symphony No. 6 in E-flat minor, Op. 23 was composed between 1921 and 1923. It is the largest and most ambitious of his 27 symphonies, planned on a Mahlerian scale, and uses a chorus in the finale. It has been described as ’probably the most significant Russian symphony between Tchaikovsky’s Pathétique and the Fourth Symphony of Shostakovich’. (Myaskovsky in fact wrote part of the work in Klin, where Tchaikovsky wrote the Pathétique.) The premiere took place at the Bolshoi Theatre, Moscow on 4 May 1924, conducted by Nikolai Golovanov and was a notable success. Soviet commentators used to describe the work as an attempt to portray the development and early struggles of the Soviet state, but it is now known that its roots were more personal. The harsh, emphatically descending chordal theme with which the symphony begins apparently arose in the composer’s mind at a mass rally in which he heard the Soviet Procurator Nikolai Krylenko conclude his speech with the call “Death, death to the enemies of the revolution!“ Myaskovsky had been affected by the deaths of his father, his close friend Alexander Revidzev and his aunt Yelikonida Konstantinovna Myaskovskaya, and especially by seeing his aunt’s body in a bleak, empty Petrograd flat during the winter of 1920. In 1919 the painter Lopatinsky, who had been living in Paris, sang Myaskovsky some French Revolutionary songs which were still current among Parisian workers: these would find their way into the symphony’s finale. He was also influenced by Les Aubes (The Dawns), a verse drama by the Belgian writer Emile Verhaeren, which enacted the death of a revolutionary hero and his funeral The scherzo is apparently inspired by the winter winds blowing outside the house where the composer’s aunt lay dead, with an Andante moderato trio that loosely references the simpleton’s Lament in Mussorgsky’s Boris Godonuv, Act IV, Scene II, (“Tears, bitter tears must fall, Our holy people must weep ... Woe, woe unto Russia! Weep, weep Russian folk, Hungry folk“) The episodic finale begins with a bright E flat major fantasia on the French revolutionary songs Ah! ça ira and Carmagnole then turning to a dark C minor with the Dies Irae. A clarinet introduces the melody of a Russian Orthodox burial hymn, ’How the Soul Parted from the Body’ (Shto mui vidyeli? – ’What did we see? A miraculous wonder, a dead body ...’). The chorus enters with wailing cries that punctuate a setting of the hymn. In the coda the main theme of the third movement returns as the basis of a peaceful epilogue.