Established in 1989, the Moscow Symphony Orchestra includes prize-winners and laureates of Russian andinternational music competitions and graduates of conservatories in Moscow, St. Petersburg and Kiev who have played under such conductors as Svetlanov, Rozhdestvensky, Mravinsky and Ozawa, in Russia and throughout the world. In addition to its extensive concert programmes, the orchestra has been recognized for its outstanding recordings for Marco Polo, including the first-ever survey of Malipiero’s symphonies, symphonic music of Guatemala, the complete symphonies of Charles Tournemire and Russian music by Scriabin, Glazunov, Rachmaninov, Tchaikovsky and Nikolay Tcherepnin.
The orchestra also stays busy recording music for contemporary films. Critical accolades for the orchestra’s wide-ranging recordings are frequent, including its important film music re-recordings with conductor William Stromberg and reconstructionist John Morgan for Marco Polo. Fanfare critic Royal S. Brown, reviewing the complete recording of Hans J. Salter and Paul Dessau’s landmark House of Frankenstein score, saluted the CD (8.223748) as a “valuable document on the kind of craftsmanship and daring in film scoring that passed by all but unnoticed because of the nature of the films.” Film Score Monthly praised the orchestra’s recording of Korngold’s Another Dawn score, adding that “Stromberg, Morgan and company could show some classical concert conductors a thing or two on how Korngold should be played and recorded.” The same magazine described a recording of suites from Max Steiner’s music for Virginia City and The Beast With Five Fingers (8.223870) as “full-blooded and emphatic.” And Rad Bennett of The Absolute Sound found so much to praise in the orchestra’s film music series he voiced a fervent desire that Marco Polo stay put in Moscow and “record film music forever”. Many of these recordings are now being reissued in the Naxos Film Music Classics series.
