Alla Pavlova is a Russian composer based in New York. The speed with which Naxos made her Symphony No. 5 available is astounding for a new work -- the ink was still wet on its pages when the Tchaikovsky Symphony of Moscow Radio recorded it under Vladimir Ziva in June 2006, and Naxos had it out on the shelves in the United States in April 2007 -- that's fast! One thing that is not fast about Pavlova's Fifth, for the most part, is the music itself. Pavlova states that this symphony is a personal meditation on life and ...
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Alla Pavlova is a Russian composer based in New York. The speed with which Naxos made her Symphony No. 5 available is astounding for a new work -- the ink was still wet on its pages when the Tchaikovsky Symphony of Moscow Radio recorded it under Vladimir Ziva in June 2006, and Naxos had it out on the shelves in the United States in April 2007 -- that's fast! One thing that is not fast about Pavlova's Fifth, for the most part, is the music itself. Pavlova states that this symphony is a personal meditation on life and spirituality, and this nearly 50-minute work is structured like a long sonata movement with two finales, "one subjective, (and) the other objective." It is only in the objective finale that the symphony seems to wake up -- the vast majority of it is slow, sad, and continually melodic with an emphasis on the strings and solo violin; winds and percussion are used only very sparingly. There is nothing in the symphony that would be out of place in Tchaikovsky, but the idiom is not particularly...
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