Shostakovich Orchetral

The Fourth Symphony has acquired a rather special status in the last few decades. It is Shostakovich’s first really mature symphony (a distinction which used to be conferred on the Fifth), and though Shostakovich had not quite finished it when he was viciously attacked in the pages of Pravda, the general consensus has been that it represented the composer’s genuine artistic aims, unsullied by the pressures of official interference.

The three full-length ballet scores that Dmitry Shostakovich wrote between 1925 and 1935 remain among his least known works. The Golden Age revolves around the visit of a Soviet football team to a Western city (referred to as 'U-town') at the time of an industrial exhibition, only for its heroic sporting and social endeavours constantly to be undermined by hostile administrators, decadent artistes and corrupt officials. Even before its premiere Shostakovich had prepared a suite, including the famous Polka (Naxos 8.553126), which barely hints at the dissonant harmonies and intricate contrapuntal designs to be found elsewhere in the ballet. This recording is the first to present the work complete with all repeats observed, enabling listeners to assess the ballet in all its exhilarating and, at times, anarchic intensity.

This performance goes right to the top. Not since the amazing mono Ancerl recording has there been a version of this work of such intensity, such expressive urgency, and (yes, believe it or not) such incredible orchestral playing. It’s impossible to praise the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic enough: they put their London colleagues to shame. The cellos and basses have a dark, tactile presence in pianissimo not heard since the old Kondrashin Melodiya recording. The horns play the daylights out of their solos in the first and third movements, while Petrenko has the violins sustaining, articulating, and phrasing the climax of the first movement with a passion and grit that’s beyond praise. Indeed, as an essay in Shostakovich conducting alone this performance deserves an honored place in every collection. Petrenko has the players digging into the second movement with unbridled ferocity at an ideally swift tempo.

The first volume in an adventurous new series juxtaposing the piano music of Shostakovich with his most talented pupils. As a teacher at the Moscow Conservatoire for many years, Shostakovich trained a generation of the Soviet Union’s most talented composers. He was renowned for a sharp ear and kindly criticism which immediately focused its attention on areas of weakness in a score without requiring that his pupils follow his own path. Indeed, all three of the younger composers here demonstrate the individuality of their own voice.

Pianist Nikolay Rubinstein, for whom Tchaikovsky wrote his First Piano Concerto, initially remarked that the concerto was completely unplayable. How ironic that not only was he made to eat his words during his lifetime, but that the concerto has been one of the most widely performed and recorded works in the repertoire. Of course, with that kind of widespread attention, each subsequent recording has more and more difficulty distinguishing itself from its predecessors. Pianist Denis Matsuev, joined by the St. Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra, manages to succeed in making this a memorable addition. Matsuev's playing is nothing short of Herculean; he plays with all the muscularity and bravura of Yefim Bronfman and then some. He is equally comfortable in delicate and nimble passagework, with the scherzo imbedded in the second movement even more dexterous and swift than Arcadi Volodos. The Shostakovich First Concerto is equally as enjoyable. Less a showpiece than its earlier cousin, Shostakovich affords Matsuev to show off his sensitive voicing, lush sound, and exceptional musicianship. Supporting Matsuev's authoritative playing is Yuri Temirkanov and the St. Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra, which matches pacing, temperament, and color with aplomb.

The back cover of this Czech release promises "certainly the most intense chamber programme that might be dedicated to the joint memory of Sviatoslav Richter and Dmitry Shostakovich," and the performances live up to the billing. The first half of the program is given over to a pair of string quartets from the year 1960, around the point where Shostakovich's inward turn following his denunciation by Soviet cultural commissars merged with his reflections on the violence of modern war to create a uniquely modern tragic dialogue.

The performances by the Emerson, Fitzwilliam and Brodsky are quite different while equally valid. The Fitzwilliam version is richly romantic and emotionally charged, sort of the "Leopold Stokowski" performance. The Emerson quartet version is at times fast, tense, highly energetic, sort of like an "Arturo Toscanini" version. The Brodsky version is carefully crafted, balanced, slightly understated, like a version by "Sir Adrian Boult." Why on earth would anyone want to understate things? Not because, as some people seem to feel, Sir Adrian and the British are afraid of expressing feelings, but because by understating the emotionalism in the music other aspects of the music are more clearly appreciated, and the overall musical experience is richer. Therefore one could easily find the Brodsky version to be the best version by a British quartet.

Few new pieces of music in the 20th century have received the kind of celebrity accorded the Shostakovich Symphony No. 7 when it arrived in America. At a time when Russia was seen in a somewhat friendly light by the allied nations, this supposed depiction of the siege of Leningrad was seized upon by the press as a vital cog in the war effort. The composer, clad in military fireman's garb, graced the cover of Time magazine, and Toscanini and Stokowski fought tooth and nail to get the premiere American performance. (Toscanini got his hands on the manuscript first, and Stokowski gave the second performance a few days later.) Here is a Soviet studio recording from the 1950s by Evgeny Mravinsky, the conductor most closely associated with Shostakovich during his lifetime. It is a strong performance with plenty of impact and the Leningrad Philharmonic in good form, and while live Mravinsky versions of several of the symphonies exist in abundance, there are none of the Seventh, making this disc especially valuable.

The music of Shostakovich has been core to Klaus and the Oslo Philharmonic’s programming from the start of their relationship, and they first performed Symphony no. 5 in November 2019 - before Klaus took up his tenure as Chief Conductor. A special performance of the 5th symphony in Oslo on 14th August will celebrate the release of this album on Decca Classics. Mäkelä & the Philharmonic will go on to perform the symphonies on tour later this year, including concerts at Salzburg Festival and Musikfest, Berlin.

James Conlon’s suite from Shostakovich’s Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk collects various scenes, arias, and orchestral interludes into a musical narrative of the opera’s tragic story. Although the first number is entitled “In the court of the Ismailovs”, the suite actually begins with Katerina’s pre-suicide meditation from the final scene before abruptly moving to the rollicking music of Scene 2’s introduction. Two love duets, “Katerina and Sergei” I & II, frame the great orchestral Passacaglia (from Act 2), followed by the comedic “The Drunkard”, which sets up the “Arrival of the Police”. The suite concludes with “In exile”, which contains the opera’s close.