Shostakovich Orchetral

The BBC Philharmonic under John Storgårds performs Shostakovich’s monumental Eleventh Symphony The Year 1905, which commemorates the St Petersburg uprising.

The piano quintet is one of Shostakovich's most popular chamber music works, and has been ever since the first performance. The premiere came only a few years after "Pravda" had denounced the composer, and the work allowed him to rehabilitate himself and return to public musical life. But the bitter years were not forgotten: although the Soviet authorities were pleased with the new work, it is full of hidden references to the fear-stricken times, and can be understood as a critique of the system. This recording does justice to the work's context, with Ashkenazy and the Fitzwilliam Quartet delivering an extremely expressive performance.

… you get here is perhaps the best of all worlds: a major symphonic work idiomatically played by a first-rate virtuoso orchestra under the hands of a conductor whose contact with the work looks back to the symphony's very creation, captured in vivid, realistic sound none of the russian maestros mentioned above could ever aspire to.

Hyperion is thrilled to welcome to the label Andrey Gugnin, winner of the 2016 Sydney International Piano Competition. With a spectacular all-Shostakovich programme built around the two piano sonatas, this is simply electrifying pianism.

This is the first release from the recently formed SWR Symphonieorchester Stuttgart, and there was good reason for it to be a performance of a Shostakovich symphony. This live recording under the experienced baton of Eliahu Inbal shows the extraordinary level at which this orchestra is performing after only five years of existence! Shostakovich’s 11th Symphony focuses on the so-called St Petersburg Bloody Sunday which, according to the Julian calendar, took place on 9 January 1905. Following the format of a classical symphony, the work has four movements; these follow one another without a break, creating a continuous narrative flow.

This recording of the 6th and 9th Symphonies is an interesting combination. The three-movement Sixth Symphony, with its brooding first movement, energetic second movement, and almost circus-like last movement, and the cheeky, almost light-weight Ninth. Note that I used the word "almost". Shostakovich manages to get pretty serious in places (the second and fourth movements come to mind here). That being said, the performances and recording of both works are first rate. There is no doubt that Mariss Jansons is a master interpreter of the music of Shostakovich.

The disc opens with a performance of Shostakovich’s Cello Sonata which, if neither the weightiest nor the most brilliant on disc, yields to no one in pure musicality. Julien-Laferrière has a Gallic tone in the best possible sense: focused and nimble, capable of intense sweetness…If one might perhaps have hoped for a slightly more opulent sound from Vitaud, it hardly seems to matter in the face of such generous and communicative music-making.

Shostakovich's Fourth Symphony is an extraordinary work by any standards. It is cast in three movements, with each of the outer two approaching half an hour in duration, astride a shorter central scherzo. Together these occupy a playing time in excess of an hour. There is a huge orchestra, of some 140 players, so the range of timbres and colours is very wide indeed, and the climaxes are overwhelmingly powerful. But more significant than any of these issues is the nature of the music itself, since the development is flexible and remarkably open-ended, veering this way and that, through passages slow and fast, thinly scored and richly powerful. It is a roller-coaster ride for both the musicians and the audience.

Shostakovich’s energetic piano concertos feature striking and attractive themes, with sudden changes of mood between the burlesque and haunting, perfectly captured in these live recordings with pianist Martin Helmchen and the London Philharmonic Orchestra’s Principal Conductor Vladimir Jurowski. The Piano Quintet displays perhaps an even greater range of styles within a work of unusual purity written under the looming shadow of war.

Shostakovich’s energetic piano concertos feature striking and attractive themes, with sudden changes of mood between the burlesque and haunting, perfectly captured in these live recordings with pianist Martin Helmchen and the London Philharmonic Orchestra’s Principal Conductor Vladimir Jurowski. The Piano Quintet displays perhaps an even greater range of styles within a work of unusual purity written under the looming shadow of war.