Wanczura: Symphonie Ukrainienne & Symphonie Russe - Fomin: Orchestral Pieces from “Boeslavich”

History teaches us that we should be wary of attaching such absolute epithets as "inventor of ..." or "father or mother of ..." to any personalities - no matter how important they may be - whereby the gaps are to be filled with every conceivable phenomenon from string quartets to films. For it happens again and again that deeper excavations make revisions necessary - as in this case, where two new fathers of Russian music suddenly relegate the younger Mikhail Glinka and the Mighty Little Bunch to the back seats. The Bohemian Ernst Wanczura (pronounced Wantschura), who was born ten years before Mozart and ended up in St. Petersburg, was possibly the first composer to use folk songs in his delightful Symphonies op. 1 and op. 2. His colleague Fomin, fifteen years his junior, with the beautiful first name and patronymic Yevstigny Ipatovich, a pupil of the famous Bolognese composer Padre Martini at state expense, was particularly successful on the stage: his melodramas and operas are veritable parabolic mirrors in which Italian, Russian and Western stylistic features come together to form a characteristic expression that could undoubtedly have become an important element if Fomin had been granted a longer life.