Miaskovsky's Op. 32 is a curious trilogy of not-quite symphonies, composed in 1928-9, in an interim period between his Tenth and Eleventh Symphonies. These were years when the pressure was on from the ever more powerful proletarian factions in Soviet culture to cater for the lowest common denominator. Not that Miaskovsky did that. Rather, in ducking the title 'symphony' he was surely attempting to find a way of staying safely and unobtrusively within the connoisseur branch of the art, to which he was so temperamentally well-suited. So these are middle-of-the-road pieces, serious and dignified, at times profoundly meditative (hear especially the long slow middle movement of the Sinfonietta), and at times giving the curious stylistic impression of Hindemith grafted on to Glazunov.

With this release Olympia are entering into competition with their own previous issues, each coupled with a Miaskovsky Symphony (the Serenade and Sinfonietta with No. 19, which is available in a recommendable Russian Disc alternative, the Lyric Concertino with the only currently available version of No. 3). The new performances are a degree or two more suave, as are the recordings, but otherwise there is little to choose between them. Stalinophiles and -phobes will want to hear the Salutation Overture, composed for the dictator's sixtieth birthday in 1939, though for most listeners I suspect one hearing will be plenty.

Gramophone, July 1994