After all the appeals I have put in for a recording of this symphony, I still cannot possibly give the issue here a recommendation—there really is no pleasing some people. But the fact is that this is no more than a dutiful read-through of a work which, in the right hands, can be a truly stirring symphonic experience. Dubbed the 'first Soviet symphony' because of the (French) Revolutionary songs in the finale (whose energetic brightness eventually gives way to emblems of funereal despair), it is the main reason why Miaskovsky was so highly thought of in the 1920s, not only in Russia but in certain pockets in the West such as Chicago, where it was given on 11 occasions between 1925 and 1941.
It is not so much the actual deficiencies in the playing or the flat perspectives of the recording which disappoint, as the squareness of Stankovsky's phrasing and his unimaginative trudging through the structure. It may be true that such squareness is Miaskovsky's abiding weakness—he may well have inherited it from Cesar Franck, along with a penchant for unremitting chromaticism and turgid scoring. But this is all the more reason to use it as a jumping-off point, rather than reinforcing its foundations. This is precisely what Kondrashin does on the old Melodiya LPs whose transfer to CD would gladden the hearts of so many Miaskovsky enthusiasts.
It should be said that the strongest points in the score—the entrancing wistfulness of the second movement trio (from 3'08'') and the entry of the chorus in the finale singing the traditional chant of the ''Parting of Body and Soul'' (12'50'') still make their mark. If money is no object and you simply must hear what the fuss is all about, by all means investigate this disc. But I cannot believe that in these days of exploratory programming a symphony as fine as this can go much longer without a recording fully worthy of its merits.'