The earlier of the two symphonies recorded here dates from 1909, and was premiered almost immediately; the latter was completed in the early years of Gretchaninov’s post-Revolution emigration, and not until Barbirolli took it up in 1942 did it achieve a hearing. The works’ comparative fates do reflect something about them, for the Second is rooted in a world of Russian romanticism that was still yielding a harvest, even if the nurturing soil seemed to have grown a little thin and underfertilized, while the Fourth has virtually abandoned its Russian roots.
The best music of No. 2 comes in the two middle movements. The Andante has a distinct lyrical charm of its own, even if the Tchaikovsky heritage (shown specifically in a theme drawn from the second subject of the first movement of the Pathetique Symphony) is felt at every turn, except in the capacity for a sustaining form. The Scherzo makes use in one of its Trios of the folk-song that Stravinsky also used in the closing scene of The Firebird. This is a pleasant, unpretentious work that could well be enjoyed by those who are feeling in a ‘What next?’ mode after Tchaikovsky’s symphonies and are not setting their sights too high. It is played with a great sense of affection under Edvard Chivzhel. Algis Zuraitis has a somewhat harder task in making gesture bear a change of expression in the Fourth Symphony, and he too finds it simpler in the middle movements.
The recording is a little cluttered, but clear enough to do justice to the music’s often colourful orchestration.'