Babi Paterson

n 1970, Riccardo Muti conducted the first Western European performance of Shostakovich’s 13th Symphony, a tape of which the composer kept until his death a few years later. This new live recording poignantly reunites work and conductor, who this time leads the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, bass soloist Alexey Tikhomirov, and male choir—all in electrifying form. Shostakovich’s settings of five poems by Yevgeny Yevtushenko—including the opening lament for the 34,000 Jews murdered in 1941 by the Nazis at Babi Yar—are dark and brutal. The remaining four poems, describing human bravery in the face of unimaginable adversity, encapsulate the fear and dread of living under Soviet oppression, and Muti brings a claustrophobic intensity and defiant dignity to Shostakovich’s alternately sardonic and angry music.

This is one of Shostakovich's greatest works. It's actually a cantata based on five poems by Yevgeny Yevtushenko. Like Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde, the music is linked and the mood of each pieces leads to the next, concluding in a heartbreaking coda. But this work was met with controversy. The poem "Babi Yar," which starts off the symphony, is based on the Nazi massacre of Jews at Babi Yar, Ukraine, during World War II. The work was banned by the politburo, but for the poetry, not the music. This recording is one of the best on the market of this work

If one function of art is to make us ponder difficult questions and thus risk causing offence, there could not be a more potent example than Shostakovich’s 13th Symphony. Setting Babi Yar, Yevtushenko’s blistering denunciation of Soviet antisemitism, in the 1960s was an act of political defiance for the composer. First heard in this country in Liverpool, it is highly appropriate that it forms the conclusion and climax of the RLPO’s riveting Shostakovich cycle. The power this performance accumulates at the climaxes of the second and third movement is lacerating; the men’s choruses may not sound totally Russian, but Alexander Vinogradov is a superb bass soloist, and Vasily Petrenko is as good at gloomy introspection as he is at brittle confrontation.

Riccardo Muti leads the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, men of the Chicago Symphony Chorus and bass soloist Alexey Tikhomirov in this poignant performance of Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 13, Op. 113 (Babi Yar), recorded live in September 2018.