| Naxos | Rubinstein wrote his Symphony No. 1 in F Major, Opus 40, in 1850. The work is, therefore, a product of the time of fruitful study in St Petersburg as Chamber Virtuoso to the Grand Duchess Elena Pavlovna, a period during which he had rejected overtly Russian influences, that were to make a relatively mild appearance later in his life. The symphony opens in fine Mendelssohnian mood, belying any suggestion of careless haste, a charge later levelled at him. It was presumably among the forty or fifty compositions he showed to Liszt in Weimar four years later. For Liszt the formal symphony must have seemed a defunct genre, much as for Balakirev and his group a musical idiom of such classical purity must have been anathema. The symphony is, in fact, pure Mendelssohn, and written, it may be recalled, only three years after that composer’s early death. The musical portrait, Ivan the Terrible, is based on the work of Lev Alexandrovich Mey, the literary source of four of Rimsky-Korsakov’s operas and of numerous songs by the Five and by Tchaikovsky. In particular Rimsky-Korsakov’s first opera, generally known as The Maid of Pskov, which bears the alternative title Ivan the Terrible, is derived from a play by Mey recounting the story of the Tsar’s attack on Novgorod, leading to the death of Tucha and his beloved Olga, the latter turning out to be the Tsar’s daughter. Keith Anderson |
| Disc No: 8.555476 | |
| Price: Sek. 74 | |
| Name: Rubinstein Symphony No.1 | |
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| Order |
| Composer | Opus | Music | Key | Performer |
| Rubinstein, Anton | Op.40 | Symphony No.1 | F major | Slovak State Philharmonic Orchestra - Robert Stankovsky |
| Rubinstein, Anton | Op.79 | Ivan the Terrible |