I've played through again all the Ivanovs Symphonies recently, - precious and enduring among Latvian's (Maris) Latvian download legacy. The ones that especially speak to me are 4, 6-8, 11, 14-16, & 20&21, but with this cycle the whole strikes me as much greater than the sum of the parts. What I mean is how the "mass" of this body of work gives expression to a breadth and depth of perennial human experience that feels at the same time very concretely rooted in a definite time and place, and which combination of "existential" and historical qualities in all the variations and permutations of a large spanned creative life leave indubitably a both personal and philosophical impression on this listener. Whatever the more compositionally objective deficiencies and/or weaknesses of individual works might be, I hear it as distinctively "genuine" music, emerging from an authentically inner impulse and struggle rather than just written according to abstract form or for incidental occasion. It's parallels with Myaskovsky's similarly infused great sequence of Symphonies have often especially intrigued and fascinated me, but in any case I'm so appreciative of Latvian's past efforts to make the music of Ivanovs available here.
AMEN AND AMEN..Ivanov's Symphonies are indeed a wonderful cycle of symphonies. Perhaps a few may be may be a difficult listen, but I keep coming back because I know I have missed the message. With good audio, I think they are the equal of anyone's.