The friendship between Mátyás Seiber and Antal Doráti dates back to their youth, when they were the two youngest students in Zoltán Kodály's composition class in Budapest in the 1920s. Doráti was one year younger than Seiber and held him in high esteem from the beginning. In the memoirs, Így láttuk Kodályt [‘Thus We Saw Kodály’], he writes the following: "The two 'best' were Mátyás Seiber and Lajos Bárdos. Matyi [Mátyás] wrote a great string quartet at the time, which has survived. One of our tasks was to write variations on a Handel theme. In response to one of Seiber's slow-tempo variations, Mr Kodály said: 'That's nice'. In our eyes - at least in my eyes - that was the canonization of Matyi."

ALEXANDER AFANASYEVICH SPENDIAROV (SPENDIARIAN) was a student of Rimsky-Korsakov and a close friend of Glazunov who wrote that he was a 'musician with an impeccable, widely versatile technique'. Spendiarov's music combines Russian and Armenian elements and is saturated in folkloric influence - and he vitally enriched the expressive range of Armenian music as a composer, pedagogue and champion of his contemporaries. His piano works, both for solo instrument and for chamber forces, show the range of his gifts, not least his romances and lullabies, and range across his entire compositional life. Spendiarov's songs, heard here in piano transcriptions by Villy Sargsyan, perfectly preserve the unique timbres and textures of these works. MIKAEL AYRAPETYAN is a pianist, composer and producer. He is also the founder and artistic director of the music project Secrets of Armenia, which aims to increase international awareness of Armenian classical music, and actively organizes concerts featuring Armenian music in venues around the world, for which he is producer, artistic director and pianist. Born in 1984 in Yerevan, Armenia, he studied at the Moscow Tchaikovsky State Conservatory, and continues to uphold the performing traditions of the Russian piano school, of which Konstantin Igumnov, Samuel Feinberg and Lev Oborin are luminaries. His repertoire ranges from the Baroque to the contemporary and includes rarely performed works by Armenian composers. His recording of Eduard Bagdasarian's piano and violin music [GP664] earned a five-star rating from International Piano, and his album of Haro Stepanian's 24 Preludes [GP760] was praised as a "discovery" by both Classica and Piano News.

In 2015, Sony Classical reissued Die Walküre and Siegfried from the first digital recording of the Ring. “It has stood the test of time remarkably well”, observed ClassicsToday.com when the complete set, originally released in 1983, was last reissued. “The Staatskapelle Dresden plays spotlessly for Marek Janowski … An excellent ‘Ring’ experience.” Now the remaining two music dramas from this acclaimed cycle are again available separately. Gramophone in 1997 praised the “marvellously clean, spacious digital recording” and “Janowski’s fast, lyrical, wholly cogent reading [which] has the Dresden Staatskapelle playing with the utmost beauty from start to finish – try the start of Act 3 of Götterdämmerung – and with lean power when that’s called for … Voices and players are in an ideal relationship, which is not say that such [orchestral] passages as the Rhine Journey and Funeral March want anything in visceral excitement … Matti Salminen is a commanding, often subtle Hagen … The smaller parts, especially Rhinemaidens led by Lucia Popp, are well taken …

It’s no surprise that The King’s Singers have recorded a huge number of love songs on all kinds of albums over the last fifty years. Some of these were albums devoted to love songs like Chanson d’amour and Romance du soir. Other albums couldn’t help but include music about love, although their theme was actually different. This album, Love Songs, is a chance to revisit some of the ensemble’s favorite tracks that they’ve recorded over the last two decades, compiled from across their back catalogue with Signum Records. The tracks they’ve chosen have come from five different albums, released between 2008 and 2017. Rather than trying to take in any of the enormous number of classical love songs from the back catalogue, the group wanted to focus on some of the best folk songs, jazz standards, and pop songs that have featured in King’s Singers concerts throughout their history. This selection has been curated especially to celebrate the group’s favorite recent albums, and to show how rich and varied the tapestry of love songs we have today is.

REVIEWS:

[A] spirited, handsomely sung program of entries representing a number of genres. I enjoy the bass fiddle licks sung with such jazzy appeal in ‘I’ve Got the World On a String’ (Harold Arlen) and Jerome Kern’s ‘I Won’t Dance’. The softrock arpeggios in Paul Simon’s ‘April Come She Will’ and ‘Helplessly Hoping’ (Stephen Stills) are great fun, and I will happily make time for Simon Carrington’s radiant arrangement of ‘My Love Is Like a Red, Red Rose’. For a union of the British choral tradition and the Doo-Wop style, look no further than this rendition of ‘At Last’.

A cappella groups singing in this style have proliferated like gangbusters on high school and college campuses. If a young musician you know is singing in one, why not get ahold of this and show them what the gold standard sounds like.

-- American Record Guide

‘Why has this intense, brilliantly orchestrated, claustrophobically gripping masterpiece been so neglected since its 1977 premiere?’ asked Richard Morrison in The Times of the concert performance in the Barbican that preceded this recording.

Miss Julie is Alwyn’s last large-scale work, written in 1973-76. Alwyn set his own libretto, based on Strindberg’s 1888 play of the same title. The naturalistic drama and lifelike characters of that play appealed to Alwyn from an early age – in fact, he previously attempted to compose an opera on Miss Julie in the 1950s. That attempt failed because of differences with his then-librettist, Christopher Hassall. Alwyn believed that in opera, the action should be self-explanatory, arias should serve a dramatic purpose (as opposed to sheer vocal display), characters should sing to each other and not to the audience, ensembles should be minimized and the text should be set to vocal lines that reflect natural speech patterns. These views were distilled over his extensive career as a film composer, which taught him that music could do more than establish characterization, suggest mood, and heighten atmosphere: in some cases it could also communicate the unspoken thoughts of an onscreen character even when these were at odds with what he or she was presenting visually.

Sakari Oramo and the BBC Symphony Orchestra support an outstanding cast featuring Anna Patalong in the title role in this acclaimed revival of Alwyn’s neglected masterpiece.

REVIEW:

Alwyn’s orchestral writing is always characterful, his vocal lines are unfailingly singable. Though his richly coloured writing reveals a whole range of 20th-century influences – Strauss, Janácek, and Ravel especially – it’s the world of Puccini that’s most strongly evoked at the work’s dramatic flashpoints. Anna Patalong as Julie nailed her character’s dangerously unhinged brittleness from the start. Benedict Nelson as Jean, the valet with whom she is so desperate to run away, sings the role with tremendous verve.

– The Guardian (UK)

A unique pairing on record of 20th-century clarinet concertos, full of musical laughter and mischief. As principal clarinet of the Orchestra della Svizzera Italiana based in Lugano, Paolo Beltramini may be seen on many films of the orchestra in action such as a beautifully shaded set of the Brahms symphonies filmed by Sony and conducted by Markus Poschner. Beltramini shines in Brahms's slow movements with many solos of doleful and consoling ease. For this album, his debut on Brilliant Classics, he leaves his chair and stands out front for two clarinet concertos which have enjoyed strikingly different fortunes. The Nielsen is a classic of the genre, probably the best-known and most-played example from the last century, abounding in Nielsen's zany humor and rebellious temperament. This four-movement work opens conventionally enough with a cheeky little melody soon taken on a gentle flight of fancy by the soloist, but it's clear, as so often with this composer, that danger and even catastrophe lurk around the corner. Nielsen intended as a portrait of a leading Danish clarinetist of his time, Aage Oxenvad, who was reportedly 'somewhat choleric in temperament, irascible but warm at heart.' The concerto, it was said by those who knew him, captured the very soul of Oxenvad. Outside his native France, the reputation of Jean Francaix has not flourished like that of Nielsen, especially since his death in 1997. Francaix was a fluent musician to a fault, born and brought up within a deeply musical family unlike Nielsen, and blessed with a ready way with melody. In 1968 he wrote this four-movement concerto and dedicated it to the bassoonist and conductor Fernand Oubradous; the first soloist was one of his students, Jacques Lancelot. Francaix admitted (not without pride) that the concerto was 'a kind of aerobatics display for the ear, complete with loops, wing-turns and nose-dives which are fairly terrifying for the soloist' - and indeed both works here stretch the technique of any clarinetist to the limit.

Classical Music

Schumann: Symphonies Nos. 1-4

Two years before the end of World War II, Wilhelm Furtwangler conducted a memorable and touching performance of Brahm's German Requiem in Switzerland. After careful and complex digital remastering, that performance is now available on CD.

This by now and long-legendary 1953 live recording of Giuseppe Verdi's Il Trovatore features a cast, conductor and orchestra that makes it difficult to imagine better. Led by Maria Callas and Carlo Tagliabue as Leonora and Count di Luna, the cast also features Ebe Stignani, Gino Penno and Giuseppe Modesti, among others. The legendary conductor Antonino Votto, often partnered with Ms. Callas, in this period, leads the Orchestra and Chorus of La Scala, Milan, in this gripping, ever-popular operatic drama.

Arnold Schoenberg founded the Society for Private Musical Performances in 1918 to perform contemporary music from "Mahler to the present". Mahler had been an early supporter of Schoenberg's music, and Schoenberg repaid the favor by arranging Mahler's orchestral works for chamber ensemble and including them at the society's concerts. The colorful Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen are given a feel of great intimacy in this form, while the lighter scoring of Das Lied von der Erde has the advantage of clarifying instrumental textures, its magical effects capturing "the finite nature of earthly things".

Xavier Montsalvatge (1912 - 2002) was an important composer in Catalan music. His work ranges from operas such as "Una voz en off" and "El gato con botas," to vocal, chamber and orchestral music. Montsalvatge's "Sinfonía de réquiem" is one of the featured works on this disc. Montsalvatge achieved international recognition with the "Cinco canciones negras" for mezzo-soprano and orchestra, also featured in this recording, which shows the influence of Antillean melodic and rhythmic characteristics. His score for the 1987 film Dragon Rapide, about Francisco Franco, was nominated for the Goya Awards.

R E V I E W S:

"The latest release in Juanjo Mena and the BBC Philharmonic's La Música de España series marks the centenary of the birth of Catalan composer Xavier Montsalvatge, the best of whose music combines Catalan and Caribbean folk idioms with taut neoclassical structures and a glamorous, post-impressionistic sense of orchestration. The finest work here is Calidoscopi Simfònic, dating from 2001 – the year before Montsalvatge's death – which dazzlingly reworks music from a ballet left unfinished in 1955... The performances are immensely persuasive."
-- The Guardian (UK)

REVIEW:

Since the demise of The City Musick some 16 years ago, Chicago has been without a period-instrument orchestra. Plenty of smaller chamber groups have been trying to fill the void, but it’s not quite the same as having a full-sized period orchestra that can tackle the larger works. Many metropolitan areas in North America can boast of having a Baroque orchestra—San Francisco, Boston, New York, Seattle, Cleveland, Toronto, Montreal. For a great city like Chicago to go without is unthinkable. The formation of the Baroque Band in 2007 was therefore something of an event and grounds for celebration. That this took place on the cusp of a severe economic downturn is even more remarkable. The present CD is the group’s debut recording, and shows it to consist of a nicely rounded 5-4-3-2-1 plus harpsichord, a healthy size by any standard. My thanks to Jim Ginsberg and his enterprising Cedille label for affording us non-Chicagoans the chance to examine the group for the first time. 

In the press release to the CD, Baroque violinist and founder Gary Clarke speculates that this may be the first time the six suites of Biber’s Mensa sonora have been recorded using full orchestra, and he may be right. My past favorite, and the Baroque Band’s chief competition, is the version by Musica Antiqua Köln and Reinhard Goebel (Archiv 423701, nla). Naturally, one cannot expect the same sort of individualistic chamber-music approach from an orchestral performance, but within the context of a larger group, the Baroque Band plays with admirable style and precision. A minor quibble has to do with the omnipresent and very prominent harpsichord continuo. Well played as it is by David Schrader, the occasional inclusion of a theorbo or chamber organ would have provided some much-needed variety.

The featured work is the famous Battalia à 10 (subtitled “for violin, strings, and basso continuo in D Major” in the booklet), and its history on record is traceable to the classic premiere recording by Concentus Musicus from 1966. That LP, which contained several other works of Biber as well as music of Muffat, was rereleased on CD in the early ’90s as part of the Collectio Argentea series (Archiv 437081, nla). It’s fascinating to compare the two period-instrument performance styles of 1966 and 2010. Back then, violinist Alice Harnoncourt played with a very sweet, vibrato-y sound, but also with great authority and presence. Here, Gary Clarke is equally authoritative, but his sound is straighter and ultimately more apropos than Harnoncourt’s. Compared to the ultra-polished but somewhat laid-back Concentus Musicus, the Baroque Band is a well-drilled regiment, clearly in command of the music. It plays with greater energy and really digs into the Bartók pizzicati in “Die Schlacht.” The players ham it up delightfully in the Lamento movement, a perfect depiction of a bunch of drunken soldiers. The “fife and drum” movement is memorable—for once, the parchment-wrapped double bass really sounds like a drum. Of the several versions that have appeared over the years, including MAK’s, the Baroque Band’s is the most successful in capturing the spirit of this unusual and innovative music.

My main complaint about the CD is that there isn’t enough of it! A timing of 56 minutes is pretty skimpy these days—it would have been easy to add another couple of works by Biber, the Pauern Kirchenfahrt , perhaps, or the Sonata representativa . The recorded sound is first-rate, and Gary Clarke’s notes afford a good introduction to the music. An excellent, urgently recommended debut disc.


FANFARE: Christopher Brodersen


Biber's Mensa Sonora ("Sonorous Table") doesn't get as much play as some of his more virtuosic violin works, but it contains splendid music nonetheless. By any standard this is an excellent performance for a period-instrument group, largely because director Garry Clarke made the smart decision to use a larger-size ensemble rather than having the music played one to a part. In his booklet notes Clarke offers all kinds of ridiculous "historical" reasons supporting this decision, and it's sad that today it is unacceptable for period-instrument performers to offer the one reason that we know would have been as valid in the composer's own time as it is in ours: the music sounds better this way.

Mensa Sonora consists of six parts (called "Pars" appropriately enough), each containing from five to seven brief movements. These range from delicate arias and sarabandes to the vigorous and rhythmically inventive second Balletto from Pars II, and including a couple of imposing Chaconnes (in Pars III and VI). A larger ensemble gives more weight and sonority (that's "Sonora", right?) to the big moments, and a richer but still intimate sound to the lighter ones. Sure, there's the usual minimization of vibrato, which is wrong, but with multiple players it matters less than usual, and to his credit Clarke permits them none of that whiny squeezing of notes that so many period ensembles deploy to the point of mannerism in lyrical passages.

The Battalia makes a substantial bonus. Clarke and his company really play up the battle scene, and the drunken soldiers make a jolly cacophony. Only the final lament of the dying doesn't quite work--it seems to me that it should be simply touching and played more or less straight, without the lachrymose chromaticism exaggerated quite so much. Of course, this is very much a matter of taste. As usual with this label, the engineering is superbly natural and well-balanced. A fine disc that all fans of Baroque music will want to consider.

--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

"• Die Jakobiner opera sung in German • Recorded 1952 Kurt Tenner conducting • The young Walter Berry, Kmentt and Uhl together in one recording in Dvorak's great opera. • Splendid sound. A must for every collector of voices. • 2 CD"

A budget-priced collection of highlights from among the composer's solo piano, chamber, vocal, and orchestral works, including his famous Concerto for Organ, Strings and Timpani in G minor.

CPO's previous release with the soloists and ensembles of the Boston Early Music Festival was awarded two prestigious prizes. The recording of Charpentier’s opera La Descente d’Orphée aux Enfers and La Couronne de Fleurs received the Grammy Award for the Best Opera Production in February 2015 and recently won the Klassik-Echo 2015, again for the Best Opera Recording of the Year. Prior to this double success, other productions by cpo and BEMF had been nominated for Gramophone Awards. In the category of the Best Opera Production these were Ariadne by Johann Georg Conradi and Thésée and Psyché by Jean-Baptiste Lully. In addition, Thésée and Psyché received nominations in the category honoring Baroque Vocal Works.

Now the American ensemble joins forces with successful soloists like Aaron Sheehan and Teresa Wakim for our production of Handel’s opera Acis and Galatea in the version of 1718, which was composed for the landed estate of the Earl of Carnarvon and does not recycle music from the earlier version. Both Acis and Galatea and the cantata Sarei troppo felice heard here represent decisive turning points in Handel’s career. The Italian cantata came at the beginning of the one and half decades spent by Handel in the service of patrons. Acis and Galatea marks the highpoint of this phase and therefore, like the cantata before it, clearly renders recognizable the musical means available to him in the private ensembles of his employers. Moreover, Acis and Galatea contains the musical and textual seeds of the English oratorio, which after 1742 completely supplanted opera compositions.

Colorful, original, whimsical, and adventuresome, this collection of musical short stories from one of America’s most diverse composers has something to please every ear.



SCHICKELE A Year in the Catskills. Gardens 1. What Did You Do Today at Jeffrey’s House 2. Dream Dances 3. Diversions • Blair Wind Qnt members; 1,2 Melissa Rose (pn); 3 Felix Wang (vc) • NAXOS 8.559687 (52:03)


The Blair Wind Quintet is a faculty ensemble of the Blair School of Music of Vanderbilt University. Though a woodwind player myself, I am not familiar with their work, so this release, the second on which this ensemble appears, is a pleasant introduction to these fine musicians. Their performances here are mostly solo and in smaller groupings, with only the title work, A Year in the Catskills, played by the whole quintet. This last is one of a trio of works for resident ensembles funded by the Blair Commissioning Project. Peter Schickele’s quintet was joined by a piano trio from Susan Botti and a string quartet by György Kurtág; one can but imagine what a wildly incongruent faculty recital that could have made.


Schickele is, of course, best known in his persona of the researcher and exhumer of works by “the youngest and oddest of J. S. Bach’s 20-odd children.” Since 1965, the year of his first public concert, he has created a body of entertaining musical parodies of familiar musical forms for his fictional P. D. Q. Bach. There is another aspect of the composer, though, as many will know. Under his own name, he composes concert works for orchestra, chorus, chamber ensembles, and vocalists, as well as scores for film, theater, and television. This disc presents a nice sampling of pieces for wind instruments, written over a 46-year period. They cross boundaries of genre and style with consummate skill, and are uniformly clever, lightweight, and charming. Even when fleetingly serious, they are never more than melancholy. They are more often humorous. In fact, minus the more obvious burlesquing that goes on in a P. D. Q. Bach pastiche, his serious works sound remarkably akin to his comedic bread and butter. The unexpected instrumental colors are a bit more subdued, the odd cadence more integrated, and the stylistic incongruities less outrageous. What is played for laughs when acting The Professor is quirky and playful in the realm of the serious composer, but the singular identity can never be in question.


Consider the four seasonal portraits of A Year in the Catskills (2009), presented in Baroque canons and a fantasy, and rounded out with a fifth movement called “Fast Driving,” which bebops the listener back to more modern urban surroundings. Or What Did You Do Today at Jeffrey’s House? (1988) for horn and piano, which remembers childhood games (one is relieved to learn, given his compositional credits for O! Calcutta! ) with a piano-stride parade and a boogie-woogie carnival with dancing bears framing a very brief compulsory nap. Finally, there is Dream Dances (1988), a suite for flute, oboe, and cello, which juxtaposes a not very Baroque minuet and sarabande with a jitterbug, a demented French gallop, and a waltz that only needs John Ferrante and some silly lyrics to become one of the Diverse Ayres on Sundrie Notions.


The two remaining earlier works give some idea of where Schickele might have headed if the fictional “minimeister of Wein-am-Rhein” had not been such a huge success. In these we hear a composer still working in academia, creating works that reflect seriously (well, all right, more seriously) on relatively contemporary styles. Gardens (1968) for oboe and piano is an atmospheric triptych with overtones of Messiaen, though this is more obvious in New York Philharmonic oboist Joseph Robinson’s recording on Cala. Diversions (1963) for oboe, clarinet, and bassoon channels neoclassical Stravinsky in portraits of the bath, a game of billiards, and a New York bar. It is all very engaging, and wonderfully presented by musicians and engineers. Naxos has a winner here, and I hope we hear more from the Blair Wind Quintet. Meanwhile, woodwind fanciers are hereby alerted to a must-buy release.


FANFARE: Ronald E. Grames


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It is a good and joyful thing to see a nice collection of Peter Schickele’s concert music. Not that he is unduly famous for his P.D.Q. Bach character, but as a composer of serious music he shines as one of the most original voices of his generation. Schickele has not invented a new wheel, rather he has managed to take traditional musical gestures and season them with his own invention with the skill of a master chef. This collection of chamber music, deftly rendered by members of the faculty of Vanderbilt’s Blair School of Music, is a showcase of the composer’s unique wit and creativity.

Commissioned by the Blair Quintet, A Year in the Catskills was brand new at the time of this recording. It is a picturesque work; full of the kind of interesting twists of melody that make Schickele’s music so fascinating. He is prone to shifting one or two notes in a tune by a semitone here or a semitone there to make what could sound quite ordinary into something that is unique and quirky.

The brief triptych Gardens, for oboe and piano is a study in colors. One of Schickele’s outstanding features is his ability to say so much in a very short time. I wouldn’t call him a miniaturist, but he can get his point across with little fuss. Such are these elegant little pieces that depict a garden at the three parts of the day. Jared Hauser plays with a sweet unforced tone, and is sensitively accompanied by pianist Melissa Rose.

What Did You Do Today at Jeffrey’s House? is a bit of nostalgia based on memories of the composer’s playtime with a childhood friend. These are whimsical pieces, pulling from a number of styles including a rollicking boogie-woogie ending. Scored for horn and piano, Leslie Norton and Melissa Rose find all the charm of these brief episodes. I can’t say that I was completely in love with the pieces themselves, as they came across to these ears as a bit contrived.

The outstanding work in this recital is the lovely set of Dream Dances. Scored for flute, oboe and cello, Schickele combines the old and the new by creating a suite that is reminiscent of a Baroque partita, but just for fun he throws in the semi-modern by replacing the Courrant with a Jitterbug and the Allemande with a Waltz. It is pretty much genius really, and Jane Kirschner, Jared Hauser and Felix Wang deliver an elegant performance full of wit.

Diversions, scored for oboe, clarinet and bassoon are again whimsical, and depict three specific scenes, a hot bath, a billiard game, and a New York bar. Although I felt that the composer captured his scenes well, I can’t say that I was particularly moved by these little snapshots, in spite of their being very well played.

Peter Schickele is reported to be one of the most performed composers in America, and it is easy to see why. The term accessible gets too much airplay, but his music is almost always captivating, mainly due to his double ability to color within the lines while choosing shades that don’t come from just any box of crayons. A good listen.

Colorful, original, whimsical, and adventuresome, this collection of musical short stories from one of America’s most diverse composers has something to please every ear.


-- Kevin Sutton, MusicWeb International

Founded in 1973 by Trevor Pinnock, the English Concert has been a leading light in the performance of Baroque and Classical music for for over 40 years. Under their present Artistic Director Harry Bicket and with distinguished guest artists they continue to perform with the passion, sophistication and technical mastery established at their creation. Such is the commitment and passion that their players bring to every performance. Drawn not only from home-grown talent, The English Concert can boast a truly international cast of musicians. Soloists in their own right, and backed-up by scholarly knowledge of style and genre, the close-knit relationship between their musicians makes for a truly special blend of sound. This new recording features the talents of these soloists in performances of Concertii by Telemann, Marcello, Dall’Abaco, Tartini and Porpora.

Neeme Järvi has been recording for Chandos for several decades now, especially with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, with which he has made more than 100 CDs. Many of these recordings have received tremendous critical acclaim and include several Gramophone Award Winners.

This is his second Chandos recording with the Residentie Orchestra The Hague, of which he is chief conductor. The first, of Bruckner’s Fifth Symphony (CHSA5080) was released in April to excellent acclaim. Gramophone wrote: ‘Järvi is too good a musician not to take his players with him. Indeed the Dutch musicians display a certain daredevil nonchalance as they breeze their way through the epic 635-bar finale.’

Mahler’s Seventh Symphony is perhaps the least well known of all Mahler’s symphonies. Its five movements were written over a period of two years, 1904 – 05, and scored and revised in 1906. The symphony has no programme, but the two serenade movements were influenced by the German romanticism of the poetry of Eichendorff, and elements of the fairytale, the macabre, and the sentimental permeate these movements.

Even though the symphony is imbued with a richness of melody, and bold and original harmonies, it is perhaps the most enigmatic of all Mahler’s symphonies. It begins with a striking funeral march, which develops into a powerful allegro, though the music is at the same time full of ‘dream-like’ elements. These dream-like fantasy elements pervade the serenade movements, which are separated by an exciting central scherzo, and the symphony ends with a vigorously contrapuntal finale. Perhaps the symphony can be seen as a journey from darkness to light, from the B minor gloom of the beginning, to the blaze of C major at the end. The journey is fascinating and very rewarding.

The recordings of the gifted Shostakovich interpreter Andrey Boreyko have met with great acclaim; his Shostakovich’s Symphonies No. 9 & 15 (CD 93.284) were awarded the Preis der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik in 2012. Shostakovich completed his Fifth Symphony in July, 1937 as a "response of a Soviet artist to justified criticism" – a critique which befell Shostakovich in 1936 over Stalin’s particular displeasure with “Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District”.