Karl Miller wrote: >My first recording was the London issue with the composer conducting. >I have tried to collect every version I can find. I have never figured >out why it isn't performed very often. If of interest, I can list the >recordings I have, including a live performance with Stokowski conducting. Please do proceed with that list. It is very interesting to observe such obvious enthusiasm for this symphony (which, incidentally, I share). Khachaturian was one of those composers of whom it was, & possibly still is, quite fashionable to criticise for bombast with specifically targeted pieces (such as this very symphony), for example: "This was a propaganda piece, written during the war when the composer was evacuated from Moscow. Khachaturian lays the Armenian colour on very thickly but, unlike the splendid Violin Concerto of two years earlier, this does not develop into a coherent argument, let alone a genuinely symphonic one. The musical value is roughly in inverse proportion to the noise made, and it is a very loud score indeed." [1987 Penguin Guide] So what does this really tell us about the aesthetic qualities of the symphony?... Absolutely nothing! The critic simply reveals by simple assertion something of his own preferences (and there's nothing inherently wrong with that), but any simple assertion made with no solid foundation in scholarship is simply refuted by any other simplistic counter-assertion. Of course, this is the level at which most people, including the present writer, operate when dealing with matters in which they have not received specialised training. Geoffrey Gaskell http://www.geoffreygaskell.co.nz/