Symphony 5 / Missa Oecumenica
When does a Mass not sound like a Mass? Well, quite often actually, but it is true that few even of those that do not really sound like Masses sound quite like Grechaninov's Missa oecumenica. One is initially nonplussed to hear the Latin words set to such fervently Russian music – there are even fragments of symphonic Tchaikovsky peeping through in several of the movements. It really ought to be in Slavonic, be more like Janácek's Glagolitic Mass, but then that was not the point: according to the critic Joseph Yasser (quoted in Eric Roseberry's notes), ‘Grechaninov has always fought against isolationism of spiritual faith, and has refused to follow the narrow traditionalism of sacred music. Indeed, he loves Western and Russian church music equally well.' If many Orthodox believers would say that this is simply abandoning sacred tradition (and such could be said in the case of the instrumentally accompanied Orthodox Liturgia Domestica as well), it must not be forgotten that what most think of as Russian sacred music today is deeply influenced by the West. In this context, one could view this Mass – not the only one the composer wrote, of course – as a ‘Russian revenge', and it certainly betrays its composer's Orthodox roots far more than, say, Pärt's Berliner Messe, another contribution to the liturgy of the West by an Orthodox composer. It possesses, from a strictly musical point of view, much beautiful writing. The interesting mixture of pseudo-organum and Russian passion in the Sanctus and the lyrical Agnus Dei are particularly memorable, though in the final analysis the work is rather too diffuse to make a lasting impression.The Fifth Symphony, written in the same year, is inevitably a more wide-ranging work, with, in spite of its rather Borodin-like roots, an obvious personality of its own and a luminous optimism all the more notable for having been written under the shadow of war. The second movement, a fine Andante, and the finale, with what Roseberry justly calls its ‘unstoppable momentum towards a life-affirming conclusion', are extremely impressive; the work certainly deserves to be much better known than it is. Polyansky elicits splendid and utterly idiomatic performances of both works from the Russian State Symphony Orchestra and Symphonic Cappella.Ivan Moody --From International Record Review - subscribe now