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In the Forum: Musical Discussions
In the Thread: Getting Started with Myaskovsky
Post Subject: recordings of the cello concertoPosted by Amphissa on: 12/11/2006
Romy, there is a project to reissue all of Svetlanov's recordings. Eventually, I hope, this project will make available the recording of the cello concerto by Natalia Gutman, which IMO is better than any of the recordings by Rostropovich.
I do not know how to describe Myaskovsky's music in ways that relate to his own world, since I never lived in Russia. To me, his cello concerto, and much of his other music, has a melancholy feeling, pensive, lonely. His music is very different from his friend Prokofiev, and from his compatriot Shostakovich. It is a landscape of resignation and sadness for his country, but also of hope. And when he was censured by the Soviets, after so many decades as one of the great composers of his era, I think this simply re-affirmed his belief that good men necessarily fall to make a better world. If you listen to the 27th symphony, there you hear his answer to them, music of great beauty and energy and hope.
I do not hear a desert landscape in his music. But it is a complex world he creates, very different from others around him. Sometimes it is a haunted dream, as in "Silence." Sometimes it is a tender lyrical dance, as in the opening of the 5th Symphony. And sometimes it is just absolute, sheer beauty, as in the 25th Symphony. And that is what I find so intriguing about Myaskovsky. He was a man of many moods, and wrote in many styles, often juxtaposing and contrasting these elements in surprising ways.Rerurn to Romy the Cat's Site