Glière Symphony No.3 'Ilya Murometz'

[Ilja]

Having had this recording as one of my very first LPs, a gift from my grandparents in the 1980s mostly because of my first name. So although nostalgia plays a role, I have honestly found (at the risk of being thrown out of the village covered in pitch and feathers) that the (well-chosen) cuts served the listening experience rather well; the full version has always seemed overly self-indulgent to me, and stretched its material excessively thinly.

[Mark Thomas]

Thanks, Alan.

[MartinH]

Hmmm...I made my own LP to CD transfer of that. If you're interested.

[Alan Howe]

I absolutely see where Adriano is coming from in his assessment of Feltz's performance. It's very well played and recorded, but comparison with, say, Rakhlin reveals a severe lack of 'slavonic fire' (for want of a better description). This Russian Bear should roar; here it's merely clearing its throat - but the roar never comes...

[adriano]

Thanks, Alan, for supporting my opinion :-)
It's a really great performance. Of course, I still remain faithful to Scherchen, who knew very well how to make music sound passionate. And he had a good flair for Russian music.
Incidentally, Fritz Brun liked Scherchen very much; those 3 Symphonies he premiered, made, apparently, a great impression. And Scherchen was so modest to "confess" some years later (in a letter to a musicologist) that he still had a bad conscience for having performed Brun's Fifth not as good as it deserved!

[adriano]

Here a video of the first Swiss performance of Glière's "Ilya Murometz":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4MClLBA5o1w&feature=youtu.be
It's the complete version!

And here some additional material (interview and rehearsal excerpts)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2BS5gYxWgHc&feature=youtu.be
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKQWsWkf76g&list=PLsnosMvGMfGIbrLZ0HQzN5pIyL9X97rnr

[Christopher]

I love how this is a piece that we keep returning and returning to.  It really is a magnificent work.

[Alan Howe]

Thanks, Adriano! This'd be worth uploading to UC. Any offers?

Yuri Simonov is one of those conductors we don't hear much of. He was assistant to Mravinsky in Leningrad. Do you know him, Adriano?

[Mark Thomas]

I'm going to make a copy of it for myself, so I'll do the job. It's a fine performance by the way.

[Alan Howe]

Oh, great. Thanks, Mark.

[adriano]

I never had the pleasure of making Maestro's Simonov acquaintance; I admire him very much. My very first Bolshoi attendance was a December 1994 performance of "Boris Godunov", and I have the impression that Simonov conducted. Most documents of my "legacy" is already stored at the Zurich Central Library, so I cannot confirm this.
Simonov made splendid Melodiya recordings, as, for example, Glinka's "Ruslan and Lyudmila" and Schedrin's ballet "Anna Karenina". But more CDs were recorded in England with the RPO.
I am being told that he had always wanted to conduct/record Glière's "Murometz". It sounds almost grotesque that this occasion would have been given after so many years just by a Swiss Conservatoire Orchestra!
His timings are 25:41 - 22:48 - 08:08 and 28:46. I've just made an audio too. The original tape is of much better quality than the one of this Youtube video.
I've had lunch today with this orchestra's manager, who, incidentally is a member of the Sarastro Quartet (string quartets by Juon and Weingartner on cpo) and also a great admirer of Fritz Brun's music :-)

[Mark Thomas]

If your audio is of much better quality than I can record from YouTube, than it would be much better if you uploaded it. I'll PM you about this, Adriano.

[adriano]

One should be careful uploading copyrighted music in a forum like UC with many members. The Youtube video is an official upload - to which composer's copyright fee is paid. Private uploadings of copyrighted music are considered as transgression; they are only allowed withing a small circle of relatives of friends.

[Mark Thomas]

Fair enough, but I see no copyright notice on the YouTube page.

[adriano]

The music of all composers (and their arrangers) are automatically copyrighted till 70 years after their death(s). This has not to be mentioned, it's an old law (Berne Convention of 1886, revisions followed after the 2nd WW and, lately, the USA finally joined in too). YouTube agreed with the EU already in 1993, but is was not working properly, so many complaints started - and new laws were issued this year upon pressure by the EU Parliament).
Our "Glière" case has (so far?) nothing to do with the remaining "neigbouring rights" (orchestra, conductor, label royalties etc.) - which are always considered separately, if they were agreed between the posting's responsibles and the artists involved (On my 49 CDs I do not get a Cent as far as that is concerned).
Since it has been at long last possible to obtain from YouTube that they respect copyrights, private persons also should be fair from their own side. The European Union struggled for quite a long time to win this cause.