YEVHEN STANKOVYCH (b.1942): Symphonies No. 1 "Sinfonia larga", No. 2 "Heroic" and No. 4 "Sinfonia lirica".

Description: This Ukrainian composer falls roughly into the Schnittke-Gubaidulina-Denisov-Silvestrov fork in the road of Soviet musical history. The Sinfonia larga, a 1973 piece for 13 strings, sounds a bit like avant-garde Penderecki but the much longer (29 minutes), full-orchestral Heroic (1975) is recognizably an anti-"war symphony" with atonal shocks there to punctuate and support what is relatively tonal music. The 26-minute Lirica (1977), for 16 strings, is neo-romantic in the composer's words but seems more like neo-Berg (of the Lyric Suite period) or late-tonal-Schoenberg in its sense of pushing tonal limits and general angst and unease. National Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine; Theodore Kuchar. Original 1995 Marco Polo release.