Polyansky’s broad approach in the Second Symphony might suggest a kinship with Previn, rather than the taut and tense Pletnev, but there isn’t such accomplished control of the fluid line. And the varying degrees of distance at which the engineering places Polyansky’s orchestra in the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatory (the same location as Pletnev) are more reminiscent of past Melodiya techniques at their most perplexing. The producer/engineer here, Igor Veprintsev, is a respected one, responsible for many fine Melodiya issues of old (such as the incomparably vivid 1965 Hindemith Symphony, Die Harmonie der Welt, under Mravinsky, recorded in the same hall). So, why the alienating distance and moments of aural fog in the last two movements of this Rachmaninov symphony, for which we seem to have moved from concert-hall to cathedral? It is true that general ensemble in the Russian State Symphony Orchestra isn’t in the Pletnev/Russian National Orchestra or Previn/LSO class (let alone that of Mravinsky’s Leningrad Philharmonic), but that is only part of the story.
If the symphony’s finale leaves a generalized impression, and the slow movement’s clarinet solo and its accompaniment lack the kind of nuances of pacing and shading to turn it into an event, the first two movements have some interesting features, among them contrasting second themes taken much more slowly. In the first movement this effectively highlights the theme’s role as consolation, but the second movement’s theme seems to have wafted in from another symphony altogether.
The choral and orchestral Three Russian Songs fare better; Polyansky’s excellent chorus are at least consistently audible and audibly Russian, unlike, on both counts, Dutoit’s Philadelphians. But it is not difficult to imagine the benefits of a lighter touch for the humour of the last song, or, in the second (as JW’s notes put it, “a gentle lament for the loss of a lover”), something that sounds a little less like mass mourning.'