BALAKIREV: Symphony no. 1

USSR State Academiс Symphony Orchestra;
Golovschin, Igor

8.550792

Balakirev started his first symphony in 1864, a year after his first appearance as a conductor. According to Rimsky-Korsakov, by 1866 Balakirev had written down a third of the first movement, with sketches for a scherzo and a finale on Russian themes, the songs Sharlatarla from Partarla and We sowed the millet. The sketches for the scherzo were later used in the second symphony. Balakirev resumed work on the first symphony in the 1890s, finishing it in December 1897. The oriental fantasy Islamey was written in 1869 and revised in 1902. It remains, in its original piano version, the best known of Balakirev's compositions, the only one to bring profit to his publishers, its exoticism matched in Liapunov's orchestral version. • The symphonic poem Tamara is based on a poem by Lermontov. Balakirev completed Tamara in 1882, although the subject had fascinated him for some fifteen years, with Islamey seemingly a preparatory sketch for the symphonic poem, which follows closely enough the moods of Lermontov's poem. Here is the gorge and rushing river, the mists, the mysterious tower, and then the pagan seductiveness of Tamara's melody, introduced by flute and oboe in sinuous unison, followed by a second more sensuous melody for clarinet. The wild entertainment of the night ends in the death of the traveller, the sinister farewell, as the river bears away its burden into the distance.

CD

Muzyka klasyczna

Naxos

04-04-1994

4891030507920