Golovin: Symphony No. 4 "Light Unapproachable"

Description

With his Fourth Symphony Andrei Golovin confirms his status as in a Major presence in the Russian symphonic tradition. The contrivances of modernism and the assumed naïveté of post-modern movements are equally alien to his music, which is informed by a profound and broad knowledge of the Russian and European repertoire and by a fierce integrity, a deep spirituality and a quality of agape well known to his friends and students.

To the influence of his teachers at Moscow Conservatoire, Yevgeniy Golubev and Yuri Fortunatov, Golovin adds that of Boris Tchaikovsky. His music is to be regarded as standing in the traditions of Stanchinsky, Medtner, the late music of Rachmaninoff and the early works of Myaskovsky.

A special quality of Golovin in the present era of cultural alienation and fragmentation is his ability to work with complete originality within an organically understood tradition. He has remarked of the Fourth Symphony: ‘The question of the search for a language has long ceased to be important to me. If you have an idea which you want to embody in sounds, then that idea immediately finds its own means of expression. The language of the second movement of the symphony differs essentially from the way in which I am used to expressing myself – but this was demanded by the idea at its basis. It must be said that I never have a definite programme in mind when naming a work; rather, I am indicating to the listener the direction in which I will be leading him…'.

The Fourth Symphony was first performed in a concert of works by Andrei Golovin in the Great Hall of Moscow Conservatoire on 25th April 2014 in which the Tchaikovsky Symphony Orchestra was conducted by the composer.