Alexander Mosolov, Taylor Ann Fleshman, The Moscow Symphony Orchestra, Arthur Arnold

Alexander Mosolov (1900-1973) is remembered for Iron Foundry, his machine-age piece of 1927, but this Naxos disc presents two works from after his fall. In 1937 he was expelled from the Union of Composers and arrested for anti-Soviet propaganda; released in 1938, he changed his style. According to the orchestra’s press release, most of his later music drew on Central Asian folk sources and was performed once or twice, if at all. The Harp Concerto of 1939 and the Symphony No. 5 of 1965 are both world premiere recordings, the concerto in its first complete performance.

Arthur Arnold conducts the Moscow Symphony Orchestra, with the American harpist Taylor Ann Fleshman, winner of the 2018 concerto competition at the PRISMA festival in British Columbia, as soloist. The sessions took place at Mosfilm Studio One in Moscow in January 2019, produced by Masha Soboleva, with Max Gutbrod as executive producer and sponsor. The concerto was first given in December 1939 by Vera Dulova under Aleksandr Gauk, who cut the Gavotte in rehearsal, and was then forgotten apart from its cadenza. Arnold found the manuscript in the Russian National Museum of Music in Moscow. Naxos calls the concerto Mosolov’s response to the harp concerto of his teacher Glière. Adam Scime, in The WholeNote, traced its four movements from contemplative opening atmospheres to the closing Toccata. The symphony, completed in 1965, was never played in Mosolov’s lifetime. It survives only in a published conductor’s score with clear mistakes, which Arnold had to correct and turn into orchestral parts before the sessions. In MusicWeb International in 2021 Paul Corfield Godfrey thought the symphony hardly justified revival, but heard in the concerto’s nocturne "music of real stature". Scime called Fleshman’s "technique and phrasing" outstanding.

Naxos CD 8.574102, released in December 2020, with booklet notes in English by Anthony Short.