Not the first digital recording as advertised, this Russian account of Miaskovsky's most consistently inspired symphony is nevertheless certainly a cut above the routine Czech performance on Marco Polo which so narrowly pipped it to the post (see above). The fact that it comes from Olympia, who have tried so hard to secure rights to the classic old Kondrashin recording, must presumably mean that prospects for the latter's reissue are doomed.

The new recording is still a very patchy affair. The Symphony Orchestra of Russia sounds under-nourished in the string department, and the balance is of the first-desks-only variety; there is an abundance of bumpy edits. Much of the opening allegro feroce is technically sub-standard, and the interpretation hangs fire, the many exhortations to Scriabinesque intensity going for very little. The later stages of the movement do manage to develop a head of steam, however, and the following scherzo goes at a real presto (though it is hardly tenebroso). The slow movement recycles extensively from the preceding movements and needs far greater subtlety and sense of atmosphere if it is not to sound stale. But the finale erupts splendidly, and although the choral section is made to feel unduly protracted, there is a certain grave inexorability as the music aspires towards the piercing light of its final high B flats.

At the very least this is a recording that might be played to conductors and impresarios in the hope that they might be fired to adopt the work. Optimists may want to wait for a top-flight orchestra to take it up (just think of the Chicago Symphony, for whom it was a repertoire piece back in the late 1920s and 1930s). Realists may prefer to make do with the new Russian performance and be thankful to Olympia for the effort that must undoubtedly have gone into securing it.

Gramophone, November 1992

Myaskovsky's Sixth was composed in 1922-23. The debacle of post-revolutionary Russia is shot through its movements like shrapnel. The folk descants, with the alcoholic cheeriness of Glazunov, are chased by the hideously sobering Dies Irae. If Myaskovsky was considered ideologically "pure," then the Communist brain-trust was missing something. The despair is not unrelenting, however; Dudarova finds in the fourth movement's waning minutes a Straussian-like transfiguration, and peace in the ascending tones of the alto choir.

Program notes by Robert Matthew-Walker are insightful and eloquent. The recording, which identifies itself as the first digital take of this piece, is grippingly real. Congratulations to all involved.

Robert J. Sullivan
Classical Net, 1997