10th Symphony (Myaskovsky)

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10th symphony
subtitle in one sentence
" The bronze rider " (unofficial)
key F minor
opus 30th
Set name
  • Un poco sostenuto - Allegro tumultuoso
Total duration approx. 17 minutes
Composed 1926/1927
occupation Symphony orchestra
premiere On April 2, 1928 in Moscow
by the Persimfans -Orchester
dedication "For KS Saradschew "

The symphony in F minor op. 30 is the tenth symphony by the composer Nikolai Jakowlewitsch Mjaskowski .

History of origin

Myaskovsky composed the tenth symphony at the same time as the ninth . The first sketches date from the winter of 1926, when he had just returned from his only trip abroad and had completed the drafts of the ninth symphony. He performed the instrumentation in the summer of 1927. At that time there was a strong collective spirit in Russia, and so the Persimfans Orchestra was founded in 1922, which managed without a conductor. This orchestra took on the world premiere of the symphony.

analysis

Equestrian statue in Saint Petersburg

In the poem The Bronze Horseman by Alexander Pushkin is about a poor St. Petersburg officials who loses his wife in a flood the city. He then curses the statue of the tsar who had the city built in the wrong place. The statue comes to life and haunts the man until he goes mad.

Myaskovsky used this poem and above all the illustrations by the Russian painter Alexander Nikolajewitsch Benua as a template for the symphony. Because of this program, it could also be called symphonic poetry . The one-movement work is in many ways reminiscent of his symphonic poems Alastor and Das Schweigen , which have a comparable character and a similar length. As there, Mjaskowski uses a very large symphony orchestra, here with an extended wind section , a large percussion lineup and five-string double basses , which were not yet common at the time. Mjaskowski described the music as “filled with the deafening roar of four trumpets , eight horns and the like. Ä. m. ”and said that it was“ as massive, monolithic in character as if it were made of iron ”.

The form of the symphony is the sonata form, but Mjaskowski manages by various means to process so much thematic material that the relatively short work takes on cyclical proportions. He uses a double introduction , expands the exposition with additional material and the development with a double fugue . The symphony is also an example of Mjaskowski's skillful handling of counterpoint and polyphony , as he does not develop the themes one after the other but in parallel. This also leads to new sound formations that considerably expand the composer's earlier tonal language. Overall, Mjaskowski did not focus on the literary model, but on the representation of "emotional unrest". The symphony is strongly tied to Russia and Saint Petersburg, even if Myaskovsky described it as “far from fashion”.

Reception and criticism

There was no reference to the literary original either in the first performance on April 2, 1928 and its repetition on April 7, or in the score jointly published in 1930 by the Soviet State Publishing House and Universal Publishing House. Mjaskowski wrote in a letter: “The music sector of the state publishing house recently received the Stokowski Concerts, but the reviews are still pending. The search for a ' subject' for my 'tenth' is quite amusing in these programs , for which almost all the ' ichthyosaurs' of Russian literature, including Cheraskov and Bogdanowitsch, tried very hard, while Pushkin, the actual 'trigger' of the whole thing, was very much is mentioned modestly at the end. However, I deliberately kept silent about the 'Iron Rider' so as not to lead our astute critics to think of simply registering 'floods' instead of the 'emotional collision' and possibly looking at the overabundance of notes in this symphony called. When I was composing, I mainly had the drawing by A. Benois (you may remember: Yevgeny fleeing from the rider and being pursued by him) as well as all sorts of poets and confused moans in my mind's eye ... "

Myaskovsky was dissatisfied with the interpretation of the Persimfans orchestra, which was also due to the fact that such a complex work can hardly be performed without a conductor. The fugue failed at the first performance, the coda at the second. Myaskovsky had already gained enough impressions during the rehearsals, on the basis of which he made minor corrections to the score. The reactions to the symphony were mixed: on the one hand, Myaskovsky was generally popular and he had enough fans in the audience that the performances were successful, on the other hand, the symphony was the subject of many negative reviews.

In 1930 Leopold Stokowski performed the symphony in Philadelphia and New York. Prokofiev reported to Myaskovsky that the work had found a "good as well as bad" reception with the audience, which Myaskovsky attributed to the fact that "Americans are hardly able to understand this work".

The tenth symphony cost Mjaskowski a lot of effort, afterwards he felt as if he had been liberated and devoted himself to three smaller orchestral pieces, which he initially called "rural concerts".

literature

  • CD supplement Warner Music France 2564 69689-8 (Miaskovsky: Intégrale des Symphonies, Evgeny Svetlanov (cond.))
  • CD supplement WarnerClassics 2564 63431-2 (Myaskovsky: Symphonies 6 & 10, Dimitri Liss (cond.))
  • Soja Gulinskaja: Nikolai Jakowlewitsch Mjaskowski. Moscow 1981, German Berlin 1985

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