- Listen to Classical Music - Orchestral Music

The Leading Classical Music Label Direct To You

Read reviews, listen to the music, and purchase the

Customer Service Toll Free 866.489.4152

Music AND Flowers. The Perfect Gifts.

Spend $50 or more on NaxosDirect and we'll give you a $10 coupon for 1800Flowers.com family of stores. Offer ends Feb. 12th. Need suggestions? Click here

Flash 9 required. Click to download.

Narrow your search
with our Music Browser

Classical Music

        Ballet
        Chamber Music
        Choral
        Concertos
        Film Music
        Folk Legends
        Instrumental
        Musicals
        Opera / Operetta
        Orchestral
        Vocal

Jazz

Jazz Contemporary
Jazz Icons

New Age

Wind Band

World

        Ballad
        Bhuddist
        Chinese Music
        Classical (World)
        Early Music (World)
        Folk
        Gamelan
        Gypsy
        Hindustani
        Jazz (World)
        Klezmer
        Sufi
        Vocal (World)
        World

Special Offers:

Free MP3 Downloads

Catalogs

Internship Opportunities

Celebrating Black History

Grammy Winners on Sale

Masters of American Music

Valentine�s Day Special

Clearance

Penguin Guide

200 Essential Recordings

Recently Released

Upcoming Releases

SACD

DVD

        Ballet DVD
        Classical Concert
        Classical Documentary
        Dance Documentary
        Opera DVD
        Pop/Rock Concert

Audio Books

        Anthologies / Collections
        Arts
        Biographies
        Children's Classics
        Classic Fiction
        Great Epics and Tales
        History
        Junior Classic Fiction
        Junior History
        Literature
        Music Biographies
        Music Education
        Non-Fiction
        Philosophy
        Plays - Others
        Plays - Shakespeare
        Poetry
        Religion
        Samplers
        Sports
        Wine Guide

NaxosDirect Podcasts

Video Librarian Reviews

Labels

Naxos Label

        Naxos American Classics
        Naxos Best Of...
        Naxos Box Sets
        Naxos Cinema Classics
        Naxos Classics
        Naxos DVD
        Naxos DVD-Audio
        Naxos International
        Naxos Jazz
        Naxos Limited Edition
        Naxos Milken Archives
        Naxos Night Music
        Naxos Opera
        Naxos Orchestral
        Naxos Special Release
        Naxos Wind Band Classics
        Naxos World

Composers

Conductors

Ensembles

Orchestras

Choirs

Artists

Instruments

Producers

Home

Classical Music

Orchestral

$0.00

This item is not currently available.

This item is currently out of print.

Link to this Link to this page

Anton Rubinstein (1829-1894) Symphony No. 4 in D Minor, Op. 95 "Dramatic" It was Gustav Mahler who described himself as three times...

Read more about this recording

Anton Rubinstein (1829-1894)

Symphony No. 4 in D Minor, Op. 95 "Dramatic"

It was Gustav Mahler who described himself as three times homeless: a Bohemian in Austria; an Austrian among Germans; a Jew throughout the whole world. The nineteenth century provided chances for Jewish assimilation into a Gentile world. The Jewish poet Heine described baptism as a ticket into European culture, and it was a course chosen by some, such as the Mendelssohn family and in Russia by the Rubinsteins. Nevertheless, as Jewish fortunes prospered, anti-Semitism became more overt. There is no doubt that Anton Rubinstein's reputation suffered because of his racial origins, much as it suffered among Russian nationalists as a result of his obviously cosmopolitan or German musical proclivities.

Anton Rubinstein was born at Vikhvatinets in the Podolsk district of the Russian Empire, on the borders of Moldavia, in 1829. A few years later his family moved to Moscow, and after early instruction on the piano from his mother he took lessons from a teacher there, a certain Villoing, later to be the teacher of his brother Nikolay. He gave his first public concert in Moscow at the age of ten. There followed four years of touring as a child virtuoso, years that took him to Paris, to Scandinavia, Austria and Germany, and to London, where he played for Queen Victoria. In 1844 the family settled in Berlin, where Rubinstein took lessons in harmony and counterpoint from Glinka's former teacher, the Prussian royal music librarian Siegfried Dehn.

In 1846 Rubinstein's father died and the rest of the family returned to Russia, while he remained abroad in Vienna and in Pressburg (the modern Bratislava), earning a living as he could by teaching and cynical about the support that the apparently generous Liszt semed to offer, which took the form of a visit to his garret in Vienna, with his entourage of disciples. As a pianist Rubinstein rivalled Liszt in fame, and the latter spoke of him with grudging respect as a composer and player, a clever fellow, but unduly influenced by the classicism of Mendelssohn, adding a less charitable description of him as the pseudo-Musician of the future on the occasion of a visit to Weimar in 1854 for the first performance of his opera The Siberian Huntsmen (Sibirskiye okhotniki).

Rubinstein's fortunes had changed as a result of a meeting with members of the Russian Imperial family during the course of an earlier visit to Paris. On his return to Russia in the winter of 1848 he found support from the Grand Duchess Elena Pavlovna, a German princess and sister-in-law of the Tsar. With her active encouragement he established in 1859 the Russian Musical Society and three years later the St. Petersburg Conservatory. His brother Nikolay, whose childhood prowess as a pianist had enjoyed similar exposure, founded a companion Conservatory in Moscow. Tchaikovsky was among the first students of the St. Petersburg Conservatory and among the first teachers on the staff of its counterpart in Moscow.

The new Conservatory aroused immediate enmity, in particular from the nationalist group of composers, bullied into collaboration by the eccentric Balakirev.

Rubinstein had tactlessly opened battle by attacking the whole notion of national opera, pointing to the alleged failure of Glinka's work. Balakirev, self-taught as a composer, objected to formal German musical training, and it was left to following generations to benefit from a profitable synthesis of the relatively primitive nationalism of the Five and the cosmopolitan sophistication and technical accomplishment of the Conservatories. Rubinstein, however, coupled technical assurance with a less overtly Russian approach, although by the time of his death in 1894 he had come to a better understanding of Russian nationalism in music, while a younger generation had come to appreciate the necessity of professional musical training.

Rubinstein was director of the St. Petersburg Conservatory until 1867, when he also gave up the direction of the Russian Music Society concerts, which now fell to Balakirev.

He returned to direct the Conservatory once more in 1887, towards the end of a career that had established him as one of the greatest contemporary pianists and as a conductor of significant ability. As a composer he was prolific, leading his younger brother Nikolay, when asked about his own compositions, to reply that Anton had written enough for both of them. As a symphonist he was regarded by Tchaikovsky as, with Joachim Raff, the leading exponent of the time, far superior to the mediocre Brahms and to Wagner, who had perversely turned his back on the symphony.

By the end of his life, however, Rubinstein had lost the respect of the younger generation, so that his name had, for them, become synonymous with kitsch - c'est du Rubinstein had become a familiar jibe. His name was jocularly changed to Tupinstein (dimwit) or Dubinstein (idiot) and Balakirev churlishly refused to attend the celebration of Rubinstein's 60th birthday in 1889. It is only now, with hindsight, that we can begin to reassess his very remarkable and substantial achievement in opera, and in orchestral and chamber music, as well as in his writing for the piano, so long remembered invidiously only by the notorious Melody in F.

Rubinstein wrote his fourth symphony in 1874, the year of his eleventh opera, Die Makkabäer. He conducted a performance at the Crystal Palace in London during the course of a visit to England in 1877, when he also introduced to the English public his Ocean Symphony, pejoratively described by Mussorgsky as "a puddle". The first three movements of the Dramatic Symphony are scored, with all the clarity of Mendelssohn, for the normal classical orchestra, with pairs of flutes, oboes, clarinets, bassoons, trumpets, French horns and timpani and strings. The symphony opens with a slow and ominous introduction, a violin motif entering above the sinister motif entrusted to cello and double bass. A dramatic Allegro moderato, where both motifs are used gives way to a more lyrical theme and a third of heroic triumph. The movement is in the prescribed classical form, with a central development that introduces some new material, before the return of the original themes, the first of which ends the movement.

The second movement Scherzo, again in D minor, includes passages of delightful interplay between pairs of wind instruments. There is a contrasting section with a solo violin, over an ostinato bass and a Trio in D major, before the return of the opening Scherzo. The F major Adagio opens with the strings playing a long-drawn melody. The woodwind at first predominate in a second theme, over a running violin accompaniment. Divided cellos and double bass introduce a flute solo and the woodwind return to the first theme before the end of the movement. Drama erupts again in the final movement, which opens with a slow introduction, to which trombones and piccolo are now added, before the unison strings embark on the Allegro con fuoco, with its angular opening theme.

A second theme, in F major and marked Moderato assai, is ushered in by the first violins. There is a contrapuntal interlude for woodwind, based on an accompanying figure first heard in the opening bars of the symphony and an extended passage derived from the principal theme, before the return of the forceful theme itself. The second theme now returns in A major, played by the French horn. The symphony ends in heroic D major triumph.

Czecho-Slovak State Philharmonic Orchestra (Košice)

The East Slovakian town of Košice boasts a long and distinguished musical tradition, as part of a province that once provided Vienna with musicians. The State Philharmonic Orchestra is of relatively recent origin and was established in 1968 under the conductor Bystrik Rezucha. Subsequent principal conductors have included Stanislav Macura and Ladislav Slovák, the latter succeeded in 1985 by his pupil Richard Zimmer. The orchestra has toured widely in Eastern and Western Europe and plays an important part in the Košice Musical Spring and the Košice InternationalOrgan Festival.

For Marco Polo the orchestra has made the first compact disc recordings of rare works by Granville Bantock and Joachim Raff. Writing on the last of these, one critic praised the orchestra for its competence comparable to that of the major orchestras of Vienna and Prague. The orchestra has contributed several successful volumes to the complete compact disc Johann Strauss II and for Naxos has recorded a varied repertoire.

Robert Stankovsky

Robert Stankovsky was born in Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia, in 1964, and after a childhood spent in the study of the piano, recorder, oboe and clarinet, turned his attention, at the age of fourteen, to conducting, graduating in this and in piano at the Bratislava Conservatory with the title of best graduate of the year. Stankovsky is regarded as one of the best conductors of the younger generation in Czechoslovakia. For Marco Polo Stankovsky has recorded symphonies by Rubinstein and Miaskovsky in addition to orchestral works by Dvořák and Smetana.

Disc 1

Symphony No. 4, D minor, Op. 95

(more info)

Performed by: Slovak State Philharmonic Orchestra
Composed by: Anton Rubinstein
Conducted by: Robert Stankovsky

Lento - Allegro moderato - 23:17
Presto - 15:58
Adagio - 9:17
Largo - Allegro con fuoco - 17:10

Reviews

Be the first to review this title

FREE SHIPPING on orders
of 5 items or more!

Earn Naxos Rewards Points by opening an account and buying your favorite music today! Create your account here.

See all of our great site features here.