The basic events of the poem may be discerned in Myaskovsky’s music, notably the flood in the opening passage (marked Tumultuoso), plus themes for the principal characters (the sole lyrical element, played Patetico on solo woodwind or violin, symbolizes the drowned fiancée) and the pursuit by the statue, a Presto Tempestosofugue on a subject using ten of the twelve pitches of the chromatic scale. In fact Myaskovsky was not so much inspired by the poem as by Alexander Benois's illustrations to it.
In its form Myaskovsky's Tenth Symphony "collapses the elements of a four-movement symphony into a densely argued single-movement form lasting little more than quarter of an hour".[1]
It requires a large orchestra, rich in brass instruments. Myaskovsky commented that the symphony was "filled with the deafening racket of four trumpets, eight horns and so on" and described it to Sergei Prokofiev as being "as massive as if it were made of iron".[1]
The premiere was given in Moscow on 2 April 1928 by the conductorless orchestraPersimfans, but the complexity of the music defeated them. In 1930 Prokofiev managed to persuade Leopold Stokowski to give a well-received U.S. premiere in Philadelphia.
Notes
1 2 Malcolm MacDonald, liner notes to Warner Classics 2564 63431-2.
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