The critical heritage of N. Myaskovsky is being examined in aspect of the problems musical performing problems and correlated with the prominent intentions of the Silver Age Russian reflections on music. It is observed for Myaskovsky as critic a phenomenon of performing interpretation wasn’t amounted to nothing more than some artistic component of the specific performance but assumed a special conceptual dimension. Hence the interpretation was perceived by him as a compound poly-level process. Its initial stage implied careful acquisition of the author’s text. The following stage was formation of the performer’s plan by getting profoundly into the composer’s conception, and enriching it by the personal content of the interpreter. The conclusive stage presupposed consecutive development of the “performing sound form”. In the last level of interpretation Myaskovsky allowed certain “co-authorship” of a composer and an interpreter.
The most careful attention was paid by Myaskovsky to repertoire policy. The criteria of selection were proclaimed novelty, seriousness, complicacy, popularization of rarely performed authors. Thus, the fundamental attitudes of Myaskovsky as critic were the priority of the new over the traditional, and of composer over interpreter. It permits to reckon Myaskovsky among the leading representatives of “contemporariness” in the Russian music criticism of the pre-revolutionary twenty years.
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