Dinara Klinton (piano), Niederrheinsche Sinfoniker, Mihkel Kutson
MDG · MDG95222366 · 67 minutes
Balakirev tends to get filed under “the guy who convinced Tchaikovsky to write Romeo and Juliet” rather than treated as a composer worth hearing on his own terms, which is a shame because his orchestral writing has this restless, richly colored quality that deserves better than a footnote. Dinara Klinton brings real muscle and clarity to the piano writing here, and the Niederrheinsche Sinfoniker under Mihkel Kutson dig into the folk-inflected textures without ever letting them turn to mush. It’s a genuinely persuasive case for music that usually gets skipped over on the way to the more famous Russians.
Awards:
- Opus Klassik Awards — 2023 — Nominated – Conductor of the Year
BBC Philharmonic, Vassily Sinaisky
Chandos · CHAN9667 · 64 minutes
Balakirev’s Symphony No. 1 spent decades gestating before he finally finished it in 1897, and you can hear that slow accumulation of ideas in every movement — the folk melodies feel worked over, layered, almost obsessively refined rather than just sketched down. Sinaisky and the BBC Philharmonic lean into that richness without letting it get syrupy, finding real forward motion in the slow movement especially. It’s a piece that gets overshadowed by the Russian symphonic names people know better, which makes this recording a genuinely useful way in.
Howard Shelley (piano)
BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, Vassily Sinaisky
Chandos · CHAN241-29 · 2 hours 13 minutes
Balakirev spent so long revising his First Symphony that Tchaikovsky and Borodin had come and gone before it premiered, and you can hear that perfectionism in every corner of the orchestration — it’s lush, meticulously balanced, and never quite lets a folk tune sit simply where a harmonic surprise could sit instead. Sinaisky and the BBC Philharmonic bring real patience to this music, letting the big Russian melodies breathe without tipping into sentimentality, while Howard Shelley handles the Piano Concerto with a lightness that keeps its more sprawling moments feeling purposeful rather than indulgent. Two hours is a real commitment, but it’s a genuinely useful way to hear how much of the “Russian sound” we associate with later composers actually started here.
“Altogether the Chandos set offers a good introduction to Balakirev’s orchestral work…”
— BBC Music Magazine
String Group of USSR State Symphony Orchestra, USSR State Symphony Orchestra, Evgeny Svetlanov
Melodiya · RCID15472859 · 74 minutes
Balakirev tends to get filed under “the guy who nagged Tchaikovsky into writing Romeo and Juliet,” which sells him way short — his own orchestral writing has this restless, exoticized color that clearly fed directly into the Russian nationalist sound everyone else got credit for. Svetlanov and the USSR State Symphony play this stuff like they actually believe in it, with a weight and conviction that a lot of “novelty repertoire” recordings never bother to summon. Seventy-four minutes is a real commitment, but it’s the kind of listening that makes you rethink where the whole Russian orchestral tradition actually starts.
USSR State Symphony Orchestra, USSR State Radio Symphony Orchestra, Nikolai Anosov, Leo Ginzburg
Naxos · 980993 · 43 minutes
Balakirev never quite gets the spotlight his colleagues in the Mighty Five enjoyed, but this pairing shows exactly why he mattered so much to Russian music’s development. The King Lear music has this wonderful orchestral weight and dramatic sweep that clearly left fingerprints on Tchaikovsky and later Rimsky-Korsakov, while the folk-song overture is just pure melodic charm, the kind of thing that makes you want to hum along even on first listen. Anosov and Ginzburg lead these Soviet-era orchestras with a rugged, unpolished energy that suits the music perfectly — nothing here feels fussed over, it just breathes.
USSR State Symphony Orchestra, Evgeny Svetlanov
CDK Music · CDK0005 · 62 minutes
Balakirev never quite gets his due next to the other members of the Mighty Handful, which is a shame because this symphony is packed with the same folk-drenched color and sprawling melodic generosity you’d want from a Russian nationalist score of this era. Svetlanov and the USSR State Symphony are the ideal advocates here — nobody conducts this repertoire with quite the same unbuttoned conviction, letting the brass roar and the string writing breathe without ever losing the architecture underneath. Sixty-two minutes with this orchestra in this music feels like a genuine discovery, not homework.
Singapore Symphony Orchestra, Choo Hoey
Marco Polo · 8220324 · 59 minutes
Balakirev is one of those composers who gets mentioned mostly as the ringleader of the Mighty Five, but rarely gets his own orchestral music actually heard, which is a shame because pieces like Tamara and the Overture on Russian Themes are packed with the same lush exoticism and folk-song colour that made his disciples famous. Choo Hoey and the Singapore Symphony dig into this stuff with real commitment, treating it less like a historical footnote and more like music that deserves to swagger on its own terms. If you’ve ever wondered what Rimsky-Korsakov’s orchestral imagination sounds like at its source, this is a genuinely fun place to find out.
Symphonie-Orchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, Esa-Pekka Salonen
Philips · 4125522 · 53 minutes
There’s something great about hearing Salonen tackle this batch of Russian orchestral color, because he’s not the kind of conductor who wallows in it — he keeps the textures clean and the rhythms taut even when the music wants to sprawl. The Bavarian Radio orchestra responds with playing that’s lush without getting syrupy, which suits Borodin’s harmonic warmth and Balakirev’s wilder fantasy just as well as it does Tchaikovsky. At 53 minutes this won’t overstay its welcome, but it’s the kind of disc you’ll want to sit with rather than have on in the background.
