Bernstein Shostakovich

Fans of Leonard Bernstein will not want to miss the chance to snap up this limited edition 60-CD set, Bernstein Symphony Edition. With a list price of just over two dollars per disc, it's a bargain not to be missed. What's most impressive about these recordings of well over 100 symphonies made between 1953 and 1976, almost all of which feature the New York Philharmonic, is the scope and depth of Bernstein's repertoire. The complete symphonic works of many of the great symphonists are here.

Here are three 20th-century violin concertos written within a 30-year period in three totally different styles, played by a soloist equally at home in all of them. Bernstein's Serenade, the earliest and most accessible work, takes its inspiration from Plato's Symposium; its five movements, musical portraits of the banquet's guests, represent different aspects of love as well as running the gamut of Bernstein's contrasting compositional styles. Rorem's concerto sounds wonderful. Its six movements have titles corresponding to their forms or moods; their character ranges from fast, brilliant, explosive to slow, passionate, melodious. Philip Glass's concerto, despite its conventional three movements and tonal, consonant harmonies, is the most elusive. Written in the "minimalist" style, which for most ordinary listeners is an acquired taste, it is based on repetition of small running figures both for orchestra and soloist, occasionally interrupted by long, high, singing lines in the violin against or above the orchestra's pulsation.

Hilary Hahn delights in putting together works that normally don't go together. Her previous pairings of works by Beethoven and Bernstein, Barber and Meyer, and Brahms and Stravinsky went against what most listeners and critics think of as apt disc mates. And in every one so far, Hahn has succeeded: each performance is superb in its own right and each sounds even better in context of the work with which it shares disc space. But not this time. In her new recording of Mendelssohn's E minor and Shostakovich's A minor concertos, Hahn has coupled an astoundingly brilliant performance of the former with a slight and shallow performance of the latter.

Gergiev pairs Shostakovich's most popular symphony with one of his wittiest. The Fifth was a lifesaver for the composer, literally. He'd come under severe attack from Stalin and his minions over the opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk. The Fifth was his response, a 1937 work of "socialist realism" glorifying "Soviet man." The subtext was quite different, the finale's numbing outburst of screaming brass and relentless drums implicitly damning the official line. But it's hardly a formulaic work, as its attractive melodies are clothed in typical Shostakovichian garb. Gergiev and the Kirov band capture the buildup of tension in the first movement, the sardonic nature of the Allegretto, and the grim Largo, as well as that ambiguous finale.

Dmitri Shostakovich was the Soviet Union’s greatest composer and a prime example of the artist under a totalitarian system. His works – including the 15 symphonies in this collection – unite powerful emotional expression with formal mastery. These acclaimed recordings are conducted by Leonard Bernstein, Myung-Whun Chung, Neeme Jarvi, Herbert von Karajan, Andre Previn and Mstislav Rostropovich – among his finest interpreters.