Marco Polo are doing invaluable work in recording pieces which in many cases have insufficient character to be viable in the concert hall, but which nevertheless serve to round out the picture of our musical heritage. Alexander Tcherepnin, son of Nikolai, with whom he moved from Russia to Paris in 1921, has now faded almost entirely from concert programmes, but he has always managed to keep a toehold in the record catalogue. His Second Symphony of 1951 used to be available on an LP coupled with the Second Piano Concerto (RCA, 9/77); the Third, composed the following year, is currently available from Thorofon; the First of 1927, not currently in the catalogue, is the one I would really like to hear, if only for its all-percussion second movement (predating Varese's Ionisation by four years).
The Fourth, and last of the cycle, was commissioned by Charles Munch for the Boston Symphony Orchestra. It dates from 1957 and is characteristically attractive and well-made. The outer movements chug along nicely with lean textures and agile rhythms, while the central slow movement goes in for moderately recherche timbres (it starts as a piccolo waltz) which might put some listeners in mind of Vaughan Williams's Eighth, completed two years earlier. A certain slackness of thematic invention and schematicism in the harmony perhaps account for the music's ultimately faceless impression and the lack of staying power; devotees of 'easy-listening' symphonies may nevertheless find things to enjoy here.
More worthy of actual concert revival, I would say, is the Romantic Overture, a kind of Russian in Paris piece based on memories of street-life in old St Petersburg. The Op. 87 Suite evokes aspects of urban life, for the most part in very obvious, sub-Petrushka ways. The Russian Dances, undeveloped though they remain, are good clean fun.
The orchestral playing shows signs of genuine relish, especially in the shorter pieces, and the recording quality is more successful than some from this source. This is an out-of-the-way issue but not one that has been thrown together without care.'