The third, polyglot version of the Fourteenth Symphony was sanctioned by the composer but it remains something of a rarity on disc; some vital and specific tone colour is lost along with the original note values, and the ‘three lilies’ adorn the grave of “The Suicide” more elegantly in the Russian. Bernard Haitink may not agree. He elected to use the multilingual text in his 1980 recording and now Joseph Swensen presents this unexpectedly compelling alternative. We tend to take sonic excellence for granted these days but this struck me as a true state-of-the-art recording with the soloists more naturally placed than in the rival Decca issue and an orchestral sound combining great clarity with just enough hall resonance.

The performance has character too, if lacking the pervasive chill of the earliest Soviet accounts. The conductor, still more familiar to UK readers in his previous guise as a Dorothy DeLay-trained violin prodigy, secures excellent results from the Tapiola Sinfonietta. They are a lean and super-efficient group, yet without the loss of character this can sometimes imply. Of the soloists, the young bass-baritone Petteri Salomaa is particularly impressive: his is a voice of rare tonal beauty, a Billy Budd rather than a Boris. His pronunciation is a little odd at times – something more noticeable in a version which has the singers feigning familiarity with four languages – but you may not see this as a problem. Tempos are perceptibly more ‘extreme’ than Haitink’s, with the opening “De profundis” dangerously slow in the modern manner and a strikingly well-characterized instrumental contribution to “A la Sante” (“In the Sante Prison” – or “Priseaux” as it tends to come out here).

The fillers, larger than life, brilliantly dispatched and curiously inappropriate, are based on original quartet pieces which only came to light in the mid 1980s. The first shares material with Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk; the second appears as the polka from The Age of Gold! This is nevertheless a more rewarding, more probingly conducted disc than most of the current Shostakovich crop.

-- Gramophone [4/1996]

This is the first orchestral release of the new SWR Symphonieorchester Stuttgart. Not without a reason one has decided to choose a symphony by Shostakovich. This live recording under the baton of the experienced conductor Eliahu Inbal shows the extraordinary level on which this orchestra operates after five years of existence. Shostakovich’s 11th Symphony focuses on the so-called “Petersburg Bloody Sunday”, which – according to the Julian calendar – took place on January 9, 1905. Just like the classical symphony the work has four movements that blend attacca into one another so as to create a continuous narrative flow. There’s no denying that the 11th Symphony is not a symphony in the classic sense but rather a symphonic poem or programme symphony. Shostakovich always needed an overriding subject for his compositions to express the “central idea” of his music.

}Gramophone (2/97, p. 58) "...DePreist gives us a pair of sensible, very well-prepared performances in good, albeit slightly studio-bound sound..."{

Shostakovich wrote his Symphony No. 13, Op. 113 in 1962. The climax of his ‘Russian period’ and, in its scoring for bass soloist, male chorus and orchestra, among the most Mussorgskian of his works, it attracted controversy through its settings of poems by Yevgeny Yevtushenko (the ‘Russian Bob Dylan’ of his day)—not least the first movement, where the poet underlines the plight of Jews in Soviet society. The other movements are no less pertinent in their observations on the relationship between society and the individual. This is the final release in Vasily Petrenko’s internationally acclaimed symphonic cycle.

The songs of Dmitry Shostakovich reflect the process of allusion and concealment that permeated his larger-scale music, and this selection traces his musical career from lighthearted early experiments to his late work. Settings of the composer’s most loved poets are included, from Marina Tsvetayeva and Mikhail Lermontov to Shakespeare, as well as settings of Jewish folk poetry. The songs are richly varied and include cabaret-like moments, romantic balladry, the avant-garde and satirical subversion. Through the intimate medium of song Shostakovich managed to express the full range of his genius. This is the third in a series of Russian vocal music recordings by the pair of mezzo-soprano Margarita Gritskova and pianist Maria Prinz. Their first album included a collection of songs by Tchaikovsky, Rimsky-Korsakov and Rachmaninov (8.573908),and was enthusiastically received by the Audio Video Club of Atlanta: ‘With superb support from her recital partner...the mezzo-soprano sings a program of Russian songs that benefit from the depth and sensual beauty of her voice. Additionally, they reveal a keen intelligence at work engaging with poetry of real literary substance.’

Celebrated international pianist Peter Donohoe begins a new series of Shostakovich releases on Signum Classics with this new recording of Shostakovich's 24 Preludes and Fugues, Op. 87. All 24 of the preludes and fugues were composed within several months, after Shostakovich was inspired by the performance of Tatiana Nicolayeva, whom he heard as a jurist for the Leipzig Bach Competition in 1951. Although doubtlessly inspired by J.S. Bach's own 48 Preludes and Fugues in his use of form and counterpoint, Shostakovich's compositions are all deeply original and rooted in his own enigmatic and ambiguous style, moving from charming simplicity to dazzling virtuosity.

REVIEW:

Time and time again you hear, in this reading, passages that sound like pure Shostakovich bumping up against the numerous Bach homages, and being made to sound right at home there. Sample the “Prelude and Fugue in F minor,” neither deeply melancholy nor neutral, and quite moving in Donohoe’s hands. The massive D minor prelude and fugue at the end has plenty of power, but is kept within the sober confines of Donohoe’s overall interpretation. The intimate atmosphere created by Signum’s engineers is another draw, and overall this is a worthwhile entry in the crowded field of recordings of these works.

-- AllMusic Guide (James Manheim)

Among other things about Peter Donohoe’s Opus 87, I do like the sense of shape he gives to the whole, with a real sense of arrival at the final magnificent Prelude and Fugue No. 24 in that most Bachian key of B minor, and some remarkable experiences along the way beforehand. The intensity of that tremolando for instance in Prelude No, 14 pushes all the buttons, and with impeccable musicality and a fine ear for all of Shostakovich’s moods Donohoe never puts a foot wrong—and indeed, tasteful pedalling also deserves a mention. Hesitate not. This is a recording of Shostakovich’s 24 Preludes and Fugues you’ll want to keep close and guard well.

-- MusicWeb International

At its première in June 1969 Shostakovich described his Symphony No. 14, in effect a symphonic song cycle, ‘a fight for the liberation of humanity…a great protest against death, a reminder to live one’s life honestly, decently, nobly…’ Originally intending to write an oratorio, Shostakovich set eleven poems on the theme of mortality, and in particular early or unjust death, for two solo singers accompanied by strings and percussion. This is the penultimate release in Vasily Petrenko’s internationally acclaimed symphonic cycle.

*** This title is a reissue of a Japanese release with liner notes in Japanese. ***

SYMPHONY NO. 13

SHOSTAKOVICH: SYMPHONY NO 8 D

Listen to the Naxos Podcast to learn more about this release

Shostakovich’s two Piano Concertos span a period of almost thirty years. The youthful First Piano Concerto is a masterful example of eclecticism, its inscrutable humour and seriousness allied to virtuoso writing enhanced by the rôle for solo trumpet. Written as a birthday present for his son Maxim, the Second Piano Concerto is light-spirited with a hauntingly beautiful slow movement. With the permission of the composer’s family, Boris Giltburg has arranged the exceptionally dark, deeply personal and powerful String Quartet No. 8, thereby establishing a major Shostakovich solo piano composition.



REVIEWS:


We have no shortage of excellent versions of the two Shostakovich piano concertos, including Igoshina’s on CPO and Marc-André Hamelin’s on Hyperion. Here is another. These are big, bold, in-your-face performances that find a wider range of expression in both works than you might have believed possible. Much of the credit for this belongs to Vasily Petrenko as well, who continues his series of top-notch Shostakovich recordings for Naxos.

In the First Concerto, particularly the outer movements, Giltburg attacks the zany, theater music themes with unbridled ferocity, finding a bitter edge of desperation for all the music’s wackiness. The bright, up-front sonics and Rhys Owens’ piercing trumpet complement the approach, and there is also some remarkably precise ensemble playing from the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic strings. It’s an exhausting cliff-hanger of a performance.

Giltburg and Petrenko’s vision of the theoretically light and easy Second Piano Concerto is even more striking. From the dry, perky winds at the start to the positively cataclysmic first movement development section, this is clearly a performance that has tremendous character–one which finds plenty of menace beneath the music’s breezy, sometimes comical, sometimes sweetly romantic exterior. It makes you sit up and listen with fresh ears, truly.

The two concertos really are two short for a single disc, and finding appropriate couplings is always an issue. This is where things get really interesting. Giltburg has made transcriptions of some of Shostakovich’s music for string quartet, the Waltz third movement from the Second Quartet, and the entire Eighth Quartet. He evidently had permission from Shostakovich’s family, which means nothing, as family members are usually terrible guardians of their illustrious ancestral legacies.

The Waltz works well enough, but the Eighth Quartet is an impossible piece to transcribe for the keyboard. This is string music, plain and simple. The sustained notes in the fourth movement simply cannot be reproduced on the piano, although with clever pedaling and a sensible tempo Giltburg almost pulls it off. The savage second movement sounds positively tame here: evidently it’s much easier to push a string quartet to its limits than it is a Fazioli.

Curiously, however, it’s impossible to call the performance as such a failure. It’s quite moving in its way, and if you know the original, either as a quartet or in its chamber symphony version, you can’t help but come away with a renewed appreciation of Shostakovich’s genius for matching the music to the (original) medium. But please, let’s not have any more of these experiments. One is more than enough. A great disc.

– ClassicsToday(David Hurwitz; 10/10)

Giltburg has all the agility, power and expressive intensity Shostakovich’s piano concertos demand, plus the temperament to negotiate their mercurial shifts of mood. Every phrase is imaginatively colored or nuanced, and never out of gimmicky point making, always because he has something worth saying. And he has found like-minded partners in the RLPO and Petrenko, who not only follow and support him superbly but also respond and provoke where appropriate.

– Gramophone

What is so appealing about this record is that the Boris Giltburg has rethought the works through the prism of the composer’s experiences. The first concerto is wonderfully skittish, a series of melodic in-jokes and exchanges with the orchestra. The second concerto, determinedly frisky, is played with a reckless to-hell-with-it abandon. With devastating precision, Giltburg has interpolated between the concertos his own piano reductions of one movement of the second string quartet and the entirety of the eight quartet, contemporaneous with the two piano concertos, exposing the composer’s seditious inner thoughts. This is a constantly illuminating, almost faultless project.

– Norman Lebrecht

Dmitri Shostakovich wrote two concertos for the cello, and both are dedicated to the most eminent Soviet cellist of his time: Mstislav Rostropovich. That was due to not only the long friendship between the composer and the virtuoso, but also Rostropovich’s courageousness in music as well as politics. When Shostakovich was expelled from all his posts in 1948, Rostropovich declared his solidarity with him, risking his own career: Shostakovich always remembered this act of friendship. In 1959 he wrote his first cello concerto, whose musical language is almost classical but which also reveals an enormous panorama of moods, gestures and “stories” for “Slava”, as Rostropovich was known amongst his friends and admirers. The scoring is transparent, featuring a single French horn as a counterpart to the solo instrument. The form of the piece is also remarkable: the third movement is an enormous cadenza, directed inwards rather than outwards and played by the cello alone. Seven years later, when the political ice age of the Brezhnev regime had been superseded by the Khrushchev thaw, Shostakovich composed his second concerto for Rostropovich. It builds on the confessional intensity of the first concerto, but seems gloomier in character; it is infused with threnodic tones and has a ticking clock at the end, showing that even the mighty men’s time has come. This album of the two Shostakovich cello concertos continues audite’s successful cooperation with the Strasbourg-born cellist Marc Coppey, who approaches both works with boundless energy and without any sentimentality.

Shostakovich’s 10th Symphony subsumes the composer’s confrontation with Stalin and the Stalin years, even if experts disagree on how it should be interpreted. Even after 1945, despite of the war that had been won, life in the Soviet Union became no easier. Dmitri Shostakovich also suffered from the repression during Stalin’s reign of terror. He had been accused of formalism since 1936, and had had to withdraw his Fourth Symphony as a result. He has also failed to produce the triumphant music expected of him following the victory over Nazi Germany: his grotesque Ninth Symphony was far removed from this and also contained hidden but sharply critical references to Stalin. After suffering humiliation in the course of the “anti-Formalist” purges of 1948, during which he was relieved of his teaching posts, Shostakovich withdrew from public life. Immediately after Stalin’s death on March 5, 1953, he was able to bring forth a significant number of serious works that he had shelved and that were all awaiting either premieres or rehabilitation. His Tenth Symphony- composed between July and October 1953- was premiered on December 17, 1953 by the Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra. Mariss Jansons considers Dmitri Shostakovich to be one of the most serious and sincere composers ever, and finds the fifteen symphonies in particular to be deeply moving and captivating. He sees their music as bearing shattering testimony to a traumatic era of political darkness, while remaining a timeless expression of existential human feeling and experience.

Jean-Christophe Maillot’s inspired adaptation of Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew won 3 Masques d’Ors (best choreographic show, best male dancer (Petruchio) and best female dancer (Katherine) and has toured the world to great acclaim since it was created for the Bolshoi in 2013. Now Maillot’s own Monte Carlo Ballet bring this “funny, fast-witted version” (The Guardian) to the screen, with a fresh and witty re-interpretation of the combative relationship between Katherine and Petruchio as they fight to find true love. Set against an inspired selection of some of Shostakovich’s most memorable music, this is one the finest “Shakespeare ballets” and not to be missed. "The Taming of the Shrew conveys the idea that there’s someone for everyone, irrespective of who or what you are. Who can judge a relationship with an outside eye? Love works in mysterious ways, and it isn’t for us to question it." (Jean-Christophe Maillot).

Pictures while listening to symphony no. 9: A joyful, almost boisterous opening movement. A dreamy, contemplative second followed by a sparkling presto. And then this short fourth movement, the helpless lament of a lonely bassoon, still showing signs of vitality against the stark, unbending, unison brass. A small, tormented individual under brutal state power. Nevertheless, still it laments. The dictator repeats his demand. But the bassoon does not totally lose heart. It starts the last movement with a shy, slightly mischievous dance that becomes gradually more light-hearted. Somewhere along the line, the timpani and horns give the signal to rise up, initially very softly. This is the announcement to the dictator: watch out, Stalin, this is it, now I'll make you think with pen and ink! The furious ascent peaks with a grotesque triumphal march that sounds like liberated laughter. The powerless one makes fun of the all-powerful – and then whistles in his face! Looking back, the question arises: who is the one lying as heavy as cold sheet metal in an eternal bottomless pit and who is the one who remains laughing in history? Judging by the music, by the 9th symphony Shostakovich had put the worst of times behind him. Quite different from in the 5th, but that's another story. Another story, by the way, that you can also find in this cinema.