Myaskovsky N. Symphony № 10. Op. 30. Score

Nikolai Yakovlevich Myaskovsky (1881–1950) belongs to the greatest composers of the symphony genre, having created 27 symphonies and other large-scaled opuses for symphony orchestra. Individually realized classical traditions, diversity of subjects worked out of embodied themes, images and emotions of real life, complexity and earnestness of music logic, tireless searches for novelties, folk material interpreted rather unrestrictedly, true art and skill. Actually every symphony manifests some new creative problem.

The early period is distinct for sulky, even sinister tones, meanwhile interwoven with lyrical, utterly bosom intonations of the Russian romantic style. Ponderous “adhesive” polyphonic texture with plentiful bassos is making for mighty sound in the first ten symphonies (1908–1927).

The Tenth Symphony seems to have been composed on the base of Schoenberg’s searches.

Writing his “Autobiographical Notes about Creative Way” Myaskovsky remembers, that the Tenth Symphony occurred to have been the response to Pushkin’s “Bronze Horseman”, when its main character Evgeny experiences uneasiness in his mind.

The world première took place in 1928, performed by the Persimfans, a conductorless orchestra in Moscow in the Soviet Union that was founded by Lev Tseitlin and existed between 1922 and 1932. Its name is an abbreviation for Pervïy Simfonicheskiy Ansambl’ bez Dirizhyora (First Conductorless Symphony Ensemble).