Est 1923

Myaskovsky/Shostakovich Chamber Symphonies

Record and Artist Details

Composer or Director: Nikolay Myaskovsky, Dmitri Shostakovich

Label: Naxos

Media Format: CD or Download

Media Runtime: 55

Mastering:

DDD

Catalogue Number: 8 550953

Tracks:

Composition Artist Credit
Sinfonietta Nikolay Myaskovsky, Composer
Dalgat String Ensemble
Nikolay Myaskovsky, Composer
Roland Melia, Conductor
String Quartet No. 8 Dmitri Shostakovich, Composer
Dalgat String Ensemble
Dmitri Shostakovich, Composer
Roland Melia, Conductor
The second of Miaskovsky’s sinfoniettas is currently unlisted on the Gramophone Database, although there has been at least one coupling of the two works (Claves, 2/95 – nla) and readers may be familiar with No. 1 from its appearance as a makeweight for Miaskovsky’s Symphony No. 27 (Olympia – nla). With neither the hysteria and Angst of the Sixth Symphony nor the melodic inspiration and intense nostalgia of the Cello Concerto, this is, I’m afraid, a desperately dull piece. The score may be competently wrought, but it comes across as utterly impersonal, with a restricted harmonic vocabulary and not a single decent tune. There is a certain wistful charm in the second movement – a sort of massively diluted Prokofiev dance number – and that’s about it. The conductor’s previous Miaskovsky disc (ASV, 10/95) contained the marginally more engaging First Sinfonietta so he must find the idiom congenial. Even if high-lying string lines are not always ideally secure, the present performance cannot be blamed for the pallid impression made by the music, and the St Petersburg recording is fully acceptable.
In the now crazily ubiquitous Barshai arrangement of the most ‘autobiographical’ of Shostakovich’s quartets, Melia favours a dirge-like tread to make the rival bargain-basement version appear positively sprightly. The Naxos booklet-notes make more sense than Arte Nova’s, the coupling rather less so.'

Myaskovsky/Shostakovich Chamber Symphonies

Sinfonietta

String Quartet No. 8

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