Hey, Another Russian Symphony

Yesterday, I posted about a BBC Music mag cover disk from 2002 featuring the BBC Philharmonic under Vassily Sinaisky in Russian music. By one of those coincidences that seems to crop up during this exercise, the current issue of BBC Music that has just arrived has as the cover disk the BBC Philharmonic under Vassily Sinaisky in Russian music. This disk has a couple of tuneful pieces by Borodin that I have on that "best of" Borodin double cd, the Prince Igor Overture and In The Steppes Of Central Asia. Somewhat longer is the Hamlet : Fantasy Overture by Tchaikovsky, not as popular as the Romeo and Juliet but still typical of thre composer with plenty of angst that is justified by the source material. The main work on the disk however is Glazunov's Symphony No 5. It shares similarities with the early Scriabin symphony discussed on the 2002 BBC disk, in fact this Glazunov symphony could be said to have ushered in a decade of Wagnerian theme-park approach to Russian symphonism. It's not a work I knew before and although it isn't an indispensable piece of music, it is worth hearing.