Two works of proletarian temper grace this album, and it hard to separate the music from the politics. The Op. 14 Symphony No. 2 (1927), with its F-sharp factory whistles, its poem by Alexander Bezymensky about the workers’ salvation makes fascinating, if eerie, listening. The actual, tonal syntax of the music is quite complex, much more contrapuntal than critics of “formalism” would endure. The opening of the symphony parallels Wagner’s Das Rheingold, an amorphous, atomistic universe, slowly congealing into recognizable, musical matter. Eventually, the colors brighten and become B Major, a kind of false apotheosis of revolutionary enlightenment, an anthem to October, the Party, and to Lenin. An amalgam of effects -like the trio of violin, clarinet, and bassoon, or the ffff horn choir -gives the music virility if not personal significance.
The Symphony No. 12 (1961) remains another controversial piece of musical propaganda, often compared to the Fourth for its images of struggle and flight, where ignorant armies clash by night. Ostensibly a portrait of Lenin, the music is filled with cries of despair and agonized brutality. Elements of sarcasm urge much of this music, especially the D Major finale, what one critic called “monumental triviality.” There is a kind of pensive beauty in the Razliv movement, named after the small lakeside village where Lenin hid out on the eve of the Revolution. Some of the harmonies and organ sonorities allude to Bruckner. “Aurora” refers to the cruiser which fired the shot that began the October uprising at St. Petersburg. A tympanic tattoo opens the movement, then pizzicati, staccato woodwinds, gathering the vanguard for an epic, militant confrontation; but the last movement, The Dawn of Humanity, exudes only empty, obsessive and banal rhetoric. Only the light-footed secondary theme brings any pastoral pleasure, but the glib pomp returns, with a hint of Tchaikovsky waltz embedded within the stolid walls of brazen pride. For audiophiles, the last two movements provide plenty of acoustic firepower.
— Gary Lemco
