Olga Froben

This CD contains an excellent selection of songs from the Russian 5. I was atrracted immediately by the Borodin songs which open this CD, and was suprise to find that the quality of the songs are just as good for the less well known Balakirev and Cui. And maybe because of their lack of formal music training, they tend to excel in this short genre. Borodina does justice to all the songs. Her voice is dark and seductive and her interpretation tends to understate (when comparing to Gorchakova), which is perfectly fine.

The dignified bearing and quiet wisdom of Nikolai Myaskovsky (1881–1950) gained him the sobriquet of ‘the conscience of Russian music’ – and those qualities are reflected in the unemphatic strength of his music. His orchestral, chamber and instrumental works are regaining the currency they once enjoyed, but his large corpus of songs, many of them understated masterpieces, has yet to attract systematic attention – a situation this series hopes to remedy. The pairing here of his late Violin Sonata with his last two song-cycles for soprano and piano mirrors the Moscow concert in 1947 when all three were given their first performances.