It was after hearing Tchaikovsky’s “Pathétique” Symphony conducted by Arthur Nikisch at the age of fifteen that the young Nikolai Myaskovski turned his back on studying engineering whilst in a battalion of combat engineers in Moscow. Along with his good friend Prokofiev, he was a student of Reinhold Glière and went on to study composition with Rimsky-Korsakov and Liadov. Myaskovski was a prolific composer and although seldom recorded, he composed, among other things, some twenty-seven symphonies and directed the Moscow Conservatory for a large part of his life. He was a five-time recipient of the Stalin Prize and one of the leading composers in the Soviet regime, skilfully managing to skirt around the authorities without openly engaging in ideological confrontation. However, in 1947 he was denounced as one of the main writers of music with anti-Soviet, anti-proletarian and formalist intent along with Shostakovich, Khatchaturian and Prokofiev and his name was only cleared after he had died of cancer in 1950.
Myaskovsky’s Symphony No. 1, composed during his studies in 1908 and revised in 1921, was still very much influenced by the Russian composers from his youth, particularly Tchaikovsky, Glazunov and Taneïev. His Symphony No. 13 dates back to 1933 but was only premiered in 1994 in a concert with the BBC Orchestra of Wales. It was composed during his experimental years and the dissonances that can be heard here were left behind in his later compositions. Just like his work, Myaskovsky was an introvert and a serious man in favour of uncompromising standards of music and as he is not as well known as his contemporaries Prokofiev and Shostakovich, his music remains to be discovered. © François Hudry/Qobuz