A fair showing from one of Moscow’s new orchestras, but it’s no match for the Russian National Orchestra. In the symphony, the strings get by (the leader only just in the solo from the opening Lento); Scriabin’s siren clarinet is a degree more alluring than the Frankfurt orchestra’s for Kitaienko on bargain-price RCA though the Moscow orchestra’s woodwind tuning (to take one example, at the end of the second Lento) needs more attention; the brass, on the whole, mind their manners.
Golovschin’s is an account of the symphony that tends to rely on sensational effects – climaxes topped with spurious percussion, much more of it than from Kitaienko or the symphony’s other past Russian interpreters – rather than one like Muti’s (full price and only available as part of a three-disc set) which takes the work on its own terms, and sees us more successfully through its potential calm waters. A plus point for Naxos is the authentic fervour of Golovschin’s Russian choir (superb basses) bringing much-needed elation to the symphony’s foursquare final “Ode to Art” (preferable to the slightly prim carolling of Kitaienko’s Frankfurt choir). Less welcome is the glockenspiel tinkling along to this finale’s earlier stages – not, I think, Scriabin’s idea (Segerstam did the same thing). The short Reverie is a familiar filler, and taken slower than usual, and coming after the symphony, sounds like more of the same (dreamy sensuousness). More experimental are the two piano Poemes, though you may feel that the second of them, in this orchestration, glitters and struts in a procession of probably ill-suited (mainly brassy) sonorities.
The unfussy (and low-level) Naxos recording gives us relatively distantly balanced forces, a studio acoustic and a very wide dynamic range. Kitaienko’s engineers opt for more presence and reverberation, and discreetly tailored dynamics. In this price range, I would let the couplings decide: Kitaienko’s disc has the Poem of Ecstasy, with an added final heavenly chorus (not even Stokowski thought of that!).'