Nikolai Myaskovsky

For so solid a figure, Nikolai Myaskovsky offers surprising contradictions and paradoxes: consistent in his musical outlook but uneven in his output; an individual who nevertheless chimed well with the Soviet Union’s Socialist Realist demands from the 1930s onwards; a conservative with flashes of what might be called modernism throughout his creative life. His apparently prolific nature leaves him open to question: surely anyone who writes 27 symphonies can’t actually be that good? Yet within that canon there are stretches of first-rate music, and since he confined himself to only a few genres, Myaskovsky was free to perfect his own take on sonata and symphonic form. Russian in spirit when he wanted to be, he was essentially international, like his lifelong friend Prokofiev.

Throughout his creative life, Myaskovsky was a conservative with flashes of modernism

It is Prokofiev who has given us the first vivid characterisation of Myaskovsky. Though their birthdays were only a week apart,