Gramophone

January 1999
OCD 653 3&4 Symphonies

       In 1943 a 19-year-old violinist in Leningrad's Musical Comedy Theatre was arrested, accused of counter-revolutionary activity and sentenced to death by firing squad. The sentence was commuted to ten years' imprisonment, and having served his term, Mikhail Nosyrev returned to his profession, first as conductor then as composer. Shostakovich assisted in his induction into the Soviet Composers' Union in 1967.

       All this is according to Per Skans's fascinating booklet-essay, and a sad, though to Sovietologists all too familiar tale it is. Yet to go on to refer to Nosyrev's music as a 'time-bomb' is to raise expectations too high. To be sure, Nosyrev's penchant for grotesque juxtaposition makes for some memorable and vivid moments, but the lack of firm discipline and the general crudity of structure mean that the full potential of such moments is never realized.

       The two symphonies recorded here were composed shortly before Nosyrev's premature death in 1981. No. 3 begins with snarling bass clarinet, bassoons and tam-tam, rather like someone sitting on the bass end of a wheezy reed organ. A lamenting low flute line begins a succession of intense tableaux, each one set in stark relief from its sur-roundings. A central Presto with sudden, scary intrusions, like a ride in a ghost train, precipitates a passionate but curiously unmotivated climax, after which a return of the flute melody has a certain wan poignancy.

       Cartoon grotesquerie and rapid juxtapositions again dominate the second movement, while the finale is in pure Shostakovich oom-pah music-hall style, with a lamenting central section also indebted to the master.

       Tinkling triangles lead off the Fourth Symphony, whose 23-minute first movement alter-nates sonoristic and expressionistic sections in a way which rather touchingly fails to get going. The 13-minute second movement starts again as if to emulate a Shostakovich finale but develops its own individual line in gruesomeness. Of all the possible coded messages in Soviet music this movement's SOS patterns (from around 5'00") constitute one of the most intriguing.

       Performances are vivid and authoritative (Verbitzky previously recorded the Third Symphony for Melodiya in 1985 - nla) and recording quality is clean. All in all, this is a release of considerably more than average interest.

DJP