3 Versions of Borodin’s Second Arrive

Tchaikovsky was hardly the first Russian to write symphonies. The reminder comes in the form of a batch of recordings indicating, above all, renewed interest in a major score rarely encountered in this country these days: the Second Symphony of Alexander Borodin.

The Second is rich in drama, with lush, folksy, often wistful melodies (mainly of the “Eastern” sort so beloved of 19th-Century Russians) and the inevitable, brassy heroism.

With the industry’s uncanny penchant for wretched timing, three different versions of the work arrive simultaneously. Two are reissues.

A Soviet conductor named Valery Gergiev--two full-page photos of the seemingly young man in the insert, but not a blessed biographical syllable--subscribes to the weighty, dark-timbred interpretive style we have come to consider typically Russian (Philips 422 996). But there’s barely a trace of the rhythmic punch and lyric grace that has contributed to the success of its most celebrated practitioners. Gergiev’s leadership might most readily be described as ponderous.

His orchestra, the Rotterdam Philharmonic, plays well but is hardly permitted to show its colors, so to speak.

The coupling is the same composer’s even less frequently encountered First Symphony, finished in 1867, two years before the Second. It has neither its successor’s voluptuous tunefulness nor its taut structure but exhibits its share of bold harmonies and striking orchestration--not surprising from an immensely gifted, largely untutored composer working without the dubious benefit of tradition-minded taskmasters.

The 1961 recording of the Second Symphony by Ernest Ansermet and his Orchestre de la Suisse Romande returns via London’s bargain Weekend Classics series (430 219).

It is part of a splendid Borodin anthology, including as well the Overture and Polovtsian Dances (with chorus) from “Prince Igor,” the superbly evocative tone poem “In the Steppes of Central Asia” (the foregoing all edited by Rimsky-Korsakov after Borodin’s death) and the charming, if slight, Third Symphony, completed by Glazunov after both Borodin and Rimsky were gone.

Ansermet’s Borodin is Gergiev’s polar opposite. The Swiss conductor takes the music seriously but not all gloomily or heavily. Ansermet’s reading, occasionally scrappy execution notwithstanding, is finely detailed and sensitive to the pleasures of the moment.

The dances from “Prince Igor,” in Ansermet’s light-fingered, sexy interpretation, are alone worth twice the puny price of admission.

RCA’s Silver Line series offers, remarkably, the identical program and more, including the “Prince Igor” march, at the identical giveaway price. The performers here are the Soviet-Armenian conductor Loris Tjeknavorian and London’s National Philharmonic (60535).

Tjeknavorian doesn’t exhibit Ansermet’s light, revealing touch, but his well-executed interpretations are mobile and sturdy, with pleasingly clear, resonant 1977 sonics.

So, unless the First Symphony is of paramount importance, go with the cheapies.

Borodin didn’t live to hear his Second Symphony performed. Rachmaninoff, to his lifelong chagrin, did hear his First Symphony at its premiere in 1895, when it was booed by its audience and pilloried by no less than Cesar Cui, a minor master of Russian composition and, alas, a powerful critic.

“If there is a conservatory in hell and one of its talented students were instructed to write a program symphony on ‘The Seven Plagues of Egypt,’ ” Cui wrote, “and if he were to compose a symphony like Mr. Rachmaninoff’s, he would have fulfilled his task brilliantly and delighted the citizens of hell.”

And that was one of the more favorable reviews of the 21-year-old composer’s work.

Retrospect again makes us incredulous at such passionate negativism. Politics--the rivalry between opposing musical camps in Moscow (Rachmaninoff’s hometown) and St. Petersburg (Cui’s)--probably had more to do with the brouhaha than Rachmaninoff’s harmonic language, which though not old-fashioned was unlikely to have shocked listeners.

Anyway, the First Symphony, though hardly an exemplar of organization and economy of means, is a grand slab of gloom in the best hyper-dramatic, lusciously tuneful, self-flagellating Tchaikovsky tradition.

By keeping the emotionalism in check and the rhythms mobile, Andrew Litton, directing the Royal Philharmonic in top form, conveys the symphony’s strong melodic ideas most convincingly while also offering a probing “Isle of the Dead,” one of Rachmaninoff’s subtlest creations (Virgin Classics 90830).