Alexander Grechaninov composed his Symphony No. 5 in 1936 in Paris, where he lived before emigrating to the United States, where the work was premiered a year later by Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra. Grechaninov consciously eschewed the more progressive style of his younger Russian colleagues Prokofiev and Stravinsky in favor of a strictly conservative approach to composition. The problem is that Grechaninov’s music sounds not so much rooted as stuck in the 19th century. Rachmaninov also composed in a late Romantic style, but his music brims with originality of content and gesture. By contrast, Grechaninov, with his amalgamation of Rimsky-Korsakov, Mussorgsky, and Borodin, tools comfortably down the middle of the road like an RV with no particular destination.
The Fifth is well orchestrated, and the first movement abounds in forward momentum leashed to an insistent and invigorating rhythmic pulse, while the slow movement is pleasing with its imaginative harmonic explorations. But as a whole, the symphony sounds like very late, or maybe post-Kalinnikov (which may suit some tastes). The same qualities are to be found in the Missa Oecumenica, so named to represent the composer’s desire to create a universal mass (however, the CD booklet essay’s comparison with Beethoven’s Missa solemnis is frankly too absurd for words). Grechaninov’s use of Russian Orthodox hymns and melodies is the most novel and interesting aspect of this work, and the whole has a light celebratory air rather than a deeply devotional or introspective one (the Gloria sounds like a commercial jingle).
Valeri Polyanksy gives the symphony a far more weighty and substantial reading, but his facile touch in the mass makes you wonder if the composer intended it to be so light-hearted. The assembled soloists and the Russian State Symphonic Cappella deliver some beautifully sonorous and emotionally committed singing, supported by the warmly polished playing of the Russian State Symphony Orchestra. Chandos provides its usual large-scaled recording. For collectors of all things Russian.
