Six symphonies later (my last comment was on No 14), still under Soviet "direction" Myaskovsky has managed (or given more freedom to) interject more of his original style. Certainly growing as an artist - as all artists do - it is hard so many decades later to guess where his works would have gone had the Revolution and subsequent Soviet Union not occurred to alter his artistic expression. I do notice a parallel between Myaskovsky and Aaron Copland during the same period. the wikipedia article on Aaron Copland is enlightening in describing the reasons for Copland to simplify his music as well as to write for younger and wider audiences. Many of his pieces in that period were attempting to illustrate idealized American life in that period. Anyway, the journey continues!
I am less familiar with# 20 than I am with any other but I liken it to 18,, but with slightly more complexity and depth. But here again, Myaskovsky at his ceerful best.
The painting shows "...a psychologically fractured daughter of an Imperial Guards colonel and wife who was just executed by Red Sailors from the battleship Gangut against the walls of the Peter and Paul Fortress in Petrograd 1919." (from laststandonzombieisland.com/2014/12/21/combat-gallery-sunday-the-martial-art-of-paul-rizhenko/umbrella-ryzhenko-pavel-viktorovich/). Note that in spite of the national romantic style, the artist was born in 1970 and died in 2014.
