Miaskovsky, Nikolai

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Miaskovsky, Nikolai

Symphony No. 8, Op. 26

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Nikolai Miaskovsky – Symphony No. 8, Op. 26 (1924-25)

(b.  Fortress Modlin, Novogeorgievsk near Warsaw, 8/20 April 1881 – d. Moscow, 8 August 1950)

I Andante (p. 3) – Più mosso (p. 6) – Allegro (Tempo I, p. 8) –
Pochissimo più sostenuto (Tempo II, p. 21) – Tempo giusto (Tempo I, p. 33) –
Più sostenuto (Tempo II, p. 57) – Tempo giusto (Tempo I, p. 70) – Andante (p. 72)

II Allegro risoluto e con spirito (p. 76) –
A doppio più lento (Allegretto comodo e semplice, p. 97) – Più tranquillo (p. 100) – Quieto (quasi allegretto, p. 101) – Allegro tenebroso (p. 102) – Quieto (p. 103) – Allegro tenebroso (p. 104)

III Adagio (p. 125) – Quasi andante (p. 143) – Più appassionato (p. 149) –
Con desiderio (p. 152) – Poco a poco rallentando al Tempo I (p. 162) – Tempo I (p. 173)

IV Allegro deciso (p. 176) – Accelerando poco a poco (p. 187) –
Più mosso, flessibile (p. 189) – Tempo I (p. 199) – Più animato (p. 203) –
In tempo (poco sostenuto, p. 205) – Tempo I (p. 224) – Poco avvivando (p. 232) – Poco più mosso, flessibile (p. 234) – Più mosso (p. 237) – Appassionato (p. 240) – Tempo giusto (p. 249) – Più pesante e fastoso (p. 255) – Più pesante (p. 259) –
Molto vivo (p. 261) – Allegro sostenuto (p. 262)

 

Preface (Christoph Schlüren, Febuary 2018)
Alongside with his English contemporary Havergal Brian (1876-1972) Nikolai Miaskovsky went down in history as the most prolific great symphonist of the 20th century (Brian wrote 32 symphonies, some of his later contributions were quite short; Miaskovsky wrote 27 symphonies). In the Soviet Union Miaskovsky ranked among the most renowned composers, and in the Russia of today his music is still quite popular. During his lifetime he was internationally present with his symphonies, particularly in the USA, but today performances of his music outside his homeland have become rare.
Miaskovsky’s œuvre builds a bridge from Russian symphonic tradition in succession to Tchaikovsky and Sergey Taneyev into Soviet modernism of the Shostakovich era – a bridge that is unique in its substance, intensity, and manifoldness. This position found little understanding among Western critics and opinionists after World War II and went out of fashion. Apart from its indisputably paramount craftsmanship they refused his music as an anachronism whereas in the Soviet Union he was admired and regularly performed as a true grandmaster.
In his critical appraisal ’Nikolai Miaskovsky: The Man of Twenty-Three Symphonies’ (1942), Nicolas Slonimsky (1894-1995) subdivided Miaskovsky’s œuvre, presumably in accordance with the composer, into four periods: period 1 comprises symphonies nos. 1-6, period 2 symphonies nos. 7-12, period 3 symphonies nos. 13-18, and period 4 symphonies nos. 19-23. Slonimsky describes the first period as ”Typical of his pre-revolutionary moods, introspective and at the same time mystical. The Sixth Symphony is the culminating point of these individualistic moods, although it was conceived in 1922 when Miaskovsky began to revise his intellectual outlook in the direction of a more realistic scheme of composition.“
Miaskovsky was born into a military family and educated at the cadet schools in Nishni Novgorod and St. Petersburg in the 1890s. Then he studied at the St. Petersburg Academy for Military Engineering from 1899 to 1902 and was thereupon stationed in Moscow as an officer. He had received his first musical impulses from hi saunt, a singer, and in St. Petersburg he had been taught in composition by Nikolai Kasanli (1869-1916). In Moscow he showed his compositions to Sergey Taneyev who sent him to Reinhold Glière (1875-1956) who gave him private composition lessons for some months in 1903. In 1904 Miaskovsky returned to St. Petersburg where he was privately tutored by the Rimsky-Korsakov pupil Ivan Kryzhanovsky (1867-1924). He began to study officially at the St. Petersburg Conservatory in 1906, was taught by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov (1844-1908) and Anatol Liadov (1855-1914), and made friends with his younger fellow student Sergey Prokofiev (1891-1953). In the beginning he wrote mostly piano music and songs. After two song cycles he composed his First Symphony Op. 3 in 1908 that was followed by his First Piano Sonata Op. 7 in 1909 and the symphonic poem ’Silence’ after Edgar Allan Poe in 1910 (all the other early works with opus numbers are songs with piano accompaniment). From now on the main focus of his creativity was laid on orchestral music, increasingly flanked by chamber music. Miaskovsky finished his Second Symphony in 1911, his Third in 1914, and his Fourth and Fifth in 1918…

 

Read full preface > HERE

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