Editing Nikolai Myaskovsky (section)

==Legacy==

===Character and influence===
Myaskovsky was long recognized as an individualist, even by the Soviet establishment. In the 1920s the critic [[Boris Asafyev]] commented that he was "not the kind of composer the Revolution would like; he reflects life not through the feelings and spirit of the masses, but through the prism of his personal feelings. He is a sincere and sensible artist, far from 'life's enemy', as he has been portrayed occasionally. He speaks not only for himself, but for many others".<ref name="yakubov"/>

Myaskovsky never married and was shy, sensitive and retiring; Pierre Souvtchinsky believed that a "brutal youth (in military school and service in the war)" left him "a fragile, secretive, introverted man, hiding some mystery within. It was as if his numerous symphonies provide a convenient if not necessary refuge in which he could hide and transpose his soul into sonorities".<ref name="yakubov"/>

Stung by the many accusations in the Soviet press of "individualism, decadence, pessimism, formalism and complexity", Myaskovsky wrote to Asafyev in 1940, "Can it be that the psychological world is so foreign to these people?"<ref name="yakubov" /> When somebody described Zhdanov's decree against "formalism" to him as "historic", he is reported to have retorted "Not historic – hysterical".<ref>Per Skans, liner notes to Alto ALC 1022.</ref> Shostakovich, who visited Myaskovsky on his deathbed, described him afterwards to the  musicologist [[Marina Sabinina]] as "the most noble, the most modest of men".<ref name="Elizabeth Wilson pp. 293-4">{{cite book|first=Elizabeth|last= Wilson|title=Shostakovich: A Life Remembered|pages= 293–4|url = https://books.google.com/books?id=IJt8EAAAQBAJ&pg=PA293 |publisher = Princeton University Press|date= 2006|isbn = 9780691128863}}</ref> [[Mstislav Rostropovich]], for whom Myaskovsky wrote his Second Cello Sonata late in life, described him as "a humorous man, a sort of real Russian intellectual, who in some ways resembled [[Turgenev]]".<ref name="Elizabeth Wilson pp. 293-4" />

Myaskovsky exercised an important influence on his many pupils, as a professor of composition at the Moscow Conservatory from 1921 until his death. The young Shostakovich considered leaving Leningrad to study with him. His students included [[Aram Khachaturian]], [[Dmitri Kabalevsky]], [[Varvara Adrianovna Gaigerova|Varvara Gaigerova]], [[Vissarion Shebalin]], [[Rodion Shchedrin]], [[German Galynin]], [[Andrei Eshpai]], [[Alexei Fedorovich Kozlovsky]], [[Alexander Lokshin]], [[Boris Tchaikovsky]], and [[Evgeny Golubev]].

The degree and nature of his influence on his students is difficult to measure.  What is lacking is an account of his teaching methods, what and how he taught, or more than brief accounts of his teaching; Shchedrin makes a mention in an interview he did for the American music magazine ''Fanfare''.  It has been said that the earlier music of Khachaturian, Kabalevsky and other of his students has a Myaskovsky flavor, with this quality decreasing as the composer's own voice emerges (since Myaskovsky's own output is internally diverse such a statement needs further clarification)<ref>See [http://www.fortunecity.com/victorian/brambles/48/kabdoc2.html this] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20041013100708/http://www.fortunecity.com/victorian/brambles/48/kabdoc2.html |date=13 October 2004 }} biographical essay on Kabalevsky's music for a case in point</ref>—while some composers, for instance the little-heard Evgeny Golubev, kept something of his teacher's characteristics well into their later music. The latter's sixth piano sonata is dedicated to Myaskovsky's memory and the early "Symphony No. 0" of Golubev's pupil [[Alfred Schnittke]], released on CD in 2007, has striking reminiscences of Myaskovsky's symphonic style and procedures.{{citation needed |date= October 2022}}

===Recordings===
Myaskovsky has not been as popular on recordings as have Shostakovich and Prokofiev. Nonetheless, most of his works have been recorded, many of them more than once, including the Cello Concerto, the Violin Concerto, many of the Symphonies, and much of his chamber and solo music.

Between 1991 and 1993 the conductor [[Yevgeny Svetlanov]] realized a massive project to record Myaskovsky's entire symphonic output and most of his other orchestral works on 16 CDs,<ref>Many of them, it seems, premiere recordings in any wide distribution form. A few works do lack. An overture for orchestra, [[opus number|opus]] 9a – which originated as a piano sonata during his conservatory years... – does not appear in the series, but appears separately from the same conductor and orchestra on another record label. There also seem to be some brief works for wind band missing (e.g. some Military Marches from 1930 and 1941, the Dramatic Overture for winds Opus 60), though these are not works for full orchestra. Only the second, most often heard version of his violin concerto is included, but the first version can be heard – and compared – in the recording of the work's premiere in a Brilliant Classics CD set.</ref> with the Symphony Orchestra of the USSR and the State Symphony Orchestra of the Russian Federation. In the chaotic conditions prevailing at the breakup of the USSR, Svetlanov is rumoured to have had to pay the orchestral musicians himself in order to undertake the sessions. The recordings began to be issued in the West by Olympia Records in 2001, but ceased after volume 10; the remaining volumes were issued by Alto Records starting in the first half of 2008. To complicate matters, in July 2008, Warner Music France issued the entire 16-CD set, boxed, as volume 35 of their 'Édition officielle Evgeny Svetlanov'.

In a testimony printed in French and English in the accompanying booklet, Svetlanov describes Myaskovsky as "the founder of Soviet symphonism, the creator of the Soviet school of composition, the composer whose work has become the bridge between Russian classics and Soviet music ... Myaskovsky entered the history of music as a great toiler like [[Joseph Haydn|Haydn]], [[Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart|Mozart]] and [[Franz Schubert|Schubert]]. ... He invented his own style, his own intonations and manner while enriching and developing the glorious tradition of Russian music".  Svetlanov also likens the current neglect of Myaskovsky's symphonies to the neglect formerly suffered by the symphonies of [[Gustav Mahler]] and [[Anton Bruckner]].<ref>'Evgeny Svetlanov remembers', booklet note with Warner Music France 2564 69689-8. The non-idiomatic English version has been corrected in this quotation by reference to the French version.</ref>

===Advocates===
One of Myaskovsky's strongest early advocates was the conductor [[Konstantin Saradzhev]].  He conducted the premieres of Myaskovsky's 8th,<ref>[http://home.wanadoo.nl/ovar/sovrev/miask/ocd738.htm Review of CD with compositions by Myaskovsky] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090213235735/http://home.wanadoo.nl/ovar/sovrev/miask/ocd738.htm |date=13 February 2009 }}</ref> 9th<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2002/nov02/Miaskovsky6-9.htm|website= Music Web International|title = Nikolai MIASKOVSKY (1881-1950): The Complete Symphonic Works: Volumes 6 - 9 on OLYMPIA |first = Rob |last=Barnett|date = November 2002}}</ref> and 11th<ref name="opus" /> symphonies and the [[symphonic poem]] ''Silence'', Op. 9 (which was dedicated to Saradzhev).<ref name="opus">[http://home.wanadoo.nl/ovar/miasopus.htm Compositions by Nikolai Myaskovsky] {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071210025510/http://home.wanadoo.nl/ovar/miasopus.htm |date=10 December 2007 }}</ref>  The 10th Symphony was also dedicated to Saradzhev.<ref name="opus" />  In 1934 Myaskovsky wrote a ''Preludium and Fughetta on the name Saradzhev'' (for orchestra, Op. 31H; he also arranged it for piano 4-hands, Op. 31J).<ref name="opus" />

In the 1930s, Myaskovsky was also one of two Russian composers championed by [[Frederick Stock]], the conductor of the [[Chicago Symphony Orchestra]].  The other was [[Reinhold Glière]], whom he met in 1940 and commissioned to write his "Feast in Fergana", Op. 75, a large-scale orchestral fantasia.

Stock met Myaskovsky in March 1938 at the invitation of the Composers Union. He commissioned Myaskovsky's 21st Symphony (Symphony-Fantasy in F-sharp minor) for the Chicago Symphony's Fiftieth Anniversary. The first performance was in Moscow on 6 November 1940 (conducted by [[Aleksandr Gauk]]); Stock conducted the Chicago premiere on 26 December 1940.