Bortnyansky, author of six operas, a small quantity of chamber music and a vast amount of liturgical music, has been pretty generally ignored in the West until relatively recently. Tchaikovsky’s disparaging comments on editing his sacred concertos also show that he was not universally appreciated in his native Russia, but he has never lost his place in the repertoire of the Russian Orthodox Church, and, as the magnificent series of recordings under Polyansky shows, these works are finely crafted pieces revealing an endless variety of invention.
This is Volume 3, and it contains some real gems. Concerto No 19 is a locus classicus of Bortnyansky’s considerable lyrical power, though he also employs his neo-baroque fugal writing to impressive effect, but No 20 is even more convincing, each movement containing a sub-structure characterised by different musical moods (one of the ways in which the composer developed his technique in these works). Tchaikovsky complained that the concertos contained ‘stagey or even operatic’ techniques, and that is quite true, but it is done, as one may hear in No 22 (at just over eight minutes the shortest on the disc), with consummate elegance. The Russian State Symphonic Cappella understand this music, in all its manifestations, completely, responding to its subtlest nuances. Highly recommended.'