Evgeny Svetlanov was the Soviet equivalent of
Eugene Ormandy, and his many recordings with the USSR Symphony Orchestra showed him to be an impulsive conductor and a heart-on-the-sleeve interpreter who was at his best in Russian orchestral music of the last years of the empire, in the big tunes of Tchaikovsky, and the big sound of
Rachmaninov. As exemplified by this Piano Concerto in C minor,
Svetlanov the composer was the same man with the same habits and tendencies. In his two-movement Piano Concerto, played here by pianist
Vladimir Ovchinnikov with
Alexander Dmitriev conducting the St. Petersburg Academic Symphony Orchestra,
Svetlanov the composer likewise had a tendency to rely on big tunes and a habit of accelerating to create climaxes. Although pianist
Ovchinnikov is clearly up to the virtuosic demands of
Svetlanov's keyboard writing and unafraid of the double octaves and 10-fingered chords, all of it is, at best, second-rate
Medtner. And although conductor
Dmitriev is clearly familiar with the idiom of
Svetlanov's orchestral scoring and its overloaded octave doubling and gaudy colors, all of it is, at best, second-rate Miaskovsky.
At least it's not Scriabin. A second-rate Lyadov blown up to Brobdingnagian proportions, Scriabin said his Symphony No. 3, his "The Divine Poem," represents "the evolution of the human spirit which, freed from the legends and mysteries of the past achieves a joyful unity with the universe." What it actually achieves is something else entirely. Even in
Dmitriev and the Academic Symphony Orchestra's thoroughly sincere performance, Scriabin's "Divine Poem" makes a totem of its own orchestral ecstasy and worships its own onanistic inspiration. Water Lily Acoustics' sound is much too forward and loud.