It’s tempting, when going to bat for a neglected composer, to exaggerate the scope and range of his talents. Gavril Popov was indeed talented. His First Symphony speaks in an idiom rather like a combination of Scriabin and Prokofiev in his more caustic mode (say, the Third Symphony). However, to suggest that Shostakovich or Prokofiev borrowed from him merely because of a couple of xylophone licks in the finale, as David Fanning does in his notes, is pushing matters too far. Popov is entitled to our sympathy as a victim of the Stalinist regime: he was, like Shostakovich and Prokofiev, denounced as a “formalist”. But those artists in their various ways triumphed over their difficulties while Popov did not. The chief reason for this appears to have been alcoholism, leading to his death in 1972 at the age of 68.
Be that as it may, the First Symphony (if you like the above composers) is great fun in an over-the-top, somewhat disorganized way. The finale, marked Scherzo e Coda, really is outrageous, possibly the most excessively noisy peroration ever attempted. Coming within the context of the Russian school, that’s really saying something, and Telarc captures every decibel with stunning fidelity in both stereo and multichannel formats. I only wish that Leon Botstein, whose discerning championship of neglected repertoire is so laudable, were a more exciting conductor. The performance here is nothing less than totally professional, but if you compare Botstein to Gennady Provatorov with the Moscow State Symphony Orchestra (last on Olympia), the differences are very striking. Provatorov trims two to three minutes off of each movement as compared to Botstein, and this, combined with authentically noisy Russian playing and despite a congested, equally Russian digital recording, gives a more powerful sense of what Popov was all about.
Certainly, if you can’t find that Olympia disc, Botstein is worth hearing, and he has typically come up with an excellent and provocative coupling: Shostakovich’s very early, totally unidiomatic, Glazunov-like Theme and Variations Op. 3. It’s very enjoyable and great fun, considering what came later. So taken as a whole, fans of neglected repertoire need not hesitate in acquiring this disc, but I just wish that Botstein would let himself go a bit more in music of this sort. Admirable though his efforts are both on and off the podium, he needs to deliver passion, not a lecture-demonstration. That’s the difference between “thrilling” and “interesting”.
