The Musical Conscience Of Moscow

It's weird how this exercise is throwing up coincidences as I proceed. Only a couple of days ago I wrote about the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra under Neeme Jarvi playing orchestral music by Rimsky-Korsakov and now they crop up again on disk performing Miaskovsky's 6th Symphony. Miaskovsky wrote a prodigious twenty-seven symphonies but No 6 is the longest and most performed. He was one of those composer's with the misfortune of living through the period of the revolution in Russia and subsequent Stalinist times. He hasn't been mythologised in the way that others, notably Shostakovich, have but he did have run ins with the authorities for "bourgeois pessimistic individualism". He managed to maintain a teaching post at the Moscow Conservatory however and maintained his artistic dignity, being nicknamed the "Musical Conscience Of Moscow". As for the music, the symphony was his main area of interest ( as it should be having written 27 of them ) and his aim was to continue and develop the style of Tchaikovsky, Glazunov etc, rather than be cutting edge and revolutionary. The sixth is a very satisfying symphonic journey, depicting finally the soul's journey beyond death as intoned by the Gothenburg Symphony Chorus in an optional chant "Of the Seperation of the Soul From the Body".