Polyansky provides a splendidly passionate and invigorating introduction to music that we really should know better in the West. The Fourth Symphony has always been the most popular of Taneyev's symphonies, and with good reason.
He writes a powerful opening Allegro and a wellbuilt finale, but for all his symphonic skills here, it's in the middle two movements that the most personal music is to be found. The scherzo dances along with the vitality that many a Russian composer has brought to comparable movements, and with the rhythmic quirks that he liked so much; but it's in the Adagio that something more is discovered. Taneyev has routinely been reproached for lacking melodic distinction, sometimes with reason, but this superb movement comes close to the manner of Bruckner, or sometimes Mahler. For English ears, the sense of 'stately sorrow' serves as a reminder that the phrase was coined of his own music by Elgar.
Conductor and players make of this fine music a tragic statement, and it's here that they're at their most intense. Polyansky also produces a strong case for the Second Symphony, his sense of structure holding the rather oddly organised opening movement together, as a powerful chorale passage has to be integrated with a sonata Allegro. He doesn't play down the suggestions of Dvorák, whom Taneyev clearly found sympathetic.
This is a striking, and very well-recorded, pair of performances, well worth the attention of lovers of Russian music.