Lyatoshynsky: Symphony No. 3 & Grazhyna

Album review

The influx of conductors from the Eastern Bloc into Britain has been accompanied by a good deal of music from the former Soviet countries, not all of it defined by the poles of Shostakovich (pushing boundaries and suffering for it) and the likes of Tikhon Khrennikov. The Symphony No. 3 in B minor, Op. 50, of Ukrainian Boris Lyatoshynsky, for instance, does not fall easily into progressive/conservative categories. The contours of Lyatoshynsky's career roughly followed that of Shostakovich, with experimental tendencies in the 1920s and '30s shelved in favor of folk music and national material as Soviet cultural commissars clamped down. The Symphony No. 3 is subtitled "Peace shall defeat war: To the twenty-fifth anniversary of the October Revolution." Regardless of the fact that the fruits of the October Revolution have been thrown in the dustbin (and that the symphony was not completed until 1951), the work retains its kick. For one thing, it's a fine orchestral showpiece, and the Bournemouth Symphony Orchesta under Ukrainian conductor Kirill Karabits play it to the hilt. This includes the limpid string work of the slow movement. For another, as with Shostakovich, the nationalistic stuff has a tendency to write emotional checks it can't quite cash. Sample the finale, which is as tonal as any musical administrator of the day could wish, but which has an intriguing undercurrent of tension. This was probably the reason the work was criticized after its first performance, whereupon Lyatoshynsky rewrote the finale. The original version is played here. The symphonic poem Grazhyna, Op. 58, that closes the program is based on a poem by the Polish patriotic poet Adam Mickiewicz; it has a similar blood-and-guts quality underlaid with a layer of greater complexity. This work makes for a fine evening at the symphony, and it makes listeners want to hear more from Lyatoshynsky.

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