Maximilian Steinberg is usually remembered as Dmitry Shostakovich’s composition teacher at the Petrograd Conservatory. Shostakovich’s youthful Symphony No 1 was composed as a graduation exercise from Steinberg’s class; but what of Steinberg the composer? Seen as the natural successor to Rimsky-Korsakov and Glazunov, Steinberg favoured a conservative style which soon saw him left behind by the likes of Igor Stravinsky. Between 1905 and 1942 Steinberg composed five symphonies, of which the first two have been recorded by that tireless musical explorer Neeme Järvi with the Gothenburg SO (DG, 11/99 – nla; 10/01). Another of Järvi’s former orchestras, the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, now offers the Fourth under Martin Yates on the enterprising Dutton label.

Like Reinhold Glière, Steinberg adapted to Communist party requirements, his 1933 Symphony No 4 celebrating the Turkestan-Siberia railway project which was completed in 1931. Each movement has a descriptive subtitle and Steinberg’s music for ‘Across Sands and Mountains’ draws on Kazakh folk melodies. The ‘Devil’s Chariot’ finale does a fair impression of a locomotive powering across the steppes. It’s not the most memorable music but Yates draws exuberant playing from the RSNO.

Steinberg’s Violin Concerto was composed in 1946 and was his final work. In some ways, it represents a step back to something more traditionally Romantic, certainly when compared with what Shostakovich would do with his First Violin Concerto the following year. Sergey Levitin, familiar to London audiences as co-concertmaster of the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, is a fine advocate for the concerto, his clean tone well captured by the Dutton engineers. Levitin is particularly persuasive in the capricious rondo finale.

Guy Rickards’s excellent booklet notes are a model of their kind, with lucid descriptions of Steinberg’s music.