Glière: Symphony No. 3
Glière (1875-1956) was one of the late Russian nationalists, along with  Rimsky-Korsakov and Glazunov, whose music collectively captures the waning years  of Romanticism in Russia. Glière's Symphony No. 3,Ilya Muromets, of 1912  takes its thematic cues from Richard Wagner, particularly Wagner's German  nationalism in such tales as theNibelungenlied. Ilya Muromets is a hero  of Russia's golden age--similar to Odysseus and Achilles--and the symphony  paints the tale of his moody adventures and his lifelong journeying. It is  probably Glière's greatest symphony, imbued with the sense of something  irretrievably lost because of the rise of Communism.--Paul Cook