Shostakovich’s First Symphony propelled the teenage composer to international prominence, its emotional range and innovative orchestration marking him as a daring and precocious talent on the scene. The Third Symphony, ‘The First of May’, originally intended as part of a symphonic cycle inspired by dates on the revolutionary calendar, has been described as ‘a reckless and at times chaotic accommodation between modernist intent and revolutionary fervour’. ‘Thrilling, perfect, essential…the modern reference recording’. (Classicstoday.com on Naxos 8.572461 / Symphony No. 10)

Abstract instrumental works (that is to say, those which had no “programme” in „Socialist Realism“.) were considered undesirable or – as in the case of chamber music – tainted by Western decadence. Shostakovich had won no friends within the cultural establishment with compositions of this nature. In two Pravda articles of 1936, Shostakovich was accused of “left-deviant” and “petit-bourgeois decadent” attitudes. By that time, he had already composed his Sonata for Violoncello and Piano in D minor op. 40; written in 1934, this work was premiered in Moscow the same year. It is essentially the commanding chamber work of Shostakovich’s early years. In this recording, the sonata is heard in the version for viola and piano for which the viola part was arranged by Veit Hertenstein. Already seriously ill, he wrote his last work, the Sonata for Viola and Piano op. 147, one month before his death. It is regarded by many as his own encounter with Death. Shostakovich knew that he was about to die. Nor did he live to see his final work premiered.

Read full review from earlier release of this complete set of the Shostakovich Complete String Quartets below.

When it comes to this music, how the quartet plays technically is just as important as what it does interpretively, and I very much like the way that the Rubio Quartet plays. Unlike so many groups in this music, they never hack or slash their way through the more violent moments, always maintaining excellent balances, smooth legato, and a warm tone. Combine this with lively tempos throughout, and the result achieves all of the necessary intensity without ugliness or distortion, realizing the composer’s intentions far more effectively than many a more rough and edgy approach. The result may well appeal to Shostakovich fans who respect rather than love these pieces (and I know that there are many), finding concentrated listening to four strings perpetually in extremis something of an ordeal (at least as compared to the symphonies, with their wider range of contrasts).

This emphasis on the classical virtues of fine chamber music playing means that those famous “crazy” moments, such as the second movement of the Eighth Quartet, erupt naturally and sound well-placed in their context with no loss of excitement, while the gentler passages in the First and Seventh Quartets, or the opening of the Fourth, are notably lovely and full of feeling. In the late quartets (Nos. 12-15) the Rubio’s emphasis on lyricism goes far toward making the music’s bleakness and dark emotional demeanor more palatable (and consequently more expressively direct) than many less ingratiating interpretations. Very natural recorded sound, happily not too close to the players, ideally complements the ensemble’s approach. You can find more gut-wrenching versions of these works (the Borodin Quartet, for example), but this set does the music full justice while also placing it within the great quartet tradition to which Shostakovich so often pays homage. An excellent achievement and a tremendous bargain.

– ClassicsToday (David Hurwitz)

An eminent violist and conductor, Rudolf Barshai was responsible for five transcriptions of Shostakovich's String Quartets and this recording completes the sequence with the Third and Tenth (Volume 1 is on 8573466). Barshai recast String Quartet No. 3 as a chamber symphony for strings and woodwind, the latter adding a sense of foreboding to the texture and engaging in whimsical dialogues during a work full of terseness and piercing power. Fashioning a Symphony for Strings from the Tenth Quartet soon after its premiere, Barshai graphically charts its movement from innocence lost and then tentatively regained.

Set in mid-nineteenth-century Italy during a turbulent period of pre-Unification political unrest, The Gadfly drew from Shostakovich one of his most dazzling and popular film scores, heard hitherto on record only in a suite arranged and reorchestrated by Levon Atovmian. This recording presents the full, original score for the first time, as closely as possible to shostakovich’s original conception. Reconstructed by Mark Fitz-Gerald from the original manuscript and the Russian film soundtrack, it calls for a large orchestra including church bells, an organ, two guitars and a mandolin, all excluded from the Atovmian suite. The excerpts from The Counterplan, which marked the fifteenth anniversary of the 1917 Revolution, include the infectious hit-tune The Song of the Counterplan.

The last symphony of Dmitri Shostakovich is a strange and evanescent valediction, both a summation of his life's music and a winking farewell to the audience. The elements of absurdity, tragedy and irony that were always present in his work are now completely integrated into a kind of serious comedy, full of self-references, ghostly quotations (Rossini and Wagner most prominent) and unexpected mood shifts, "night music" visions that appear and vanish like mirages.
Eugene Ormandy was a staunch advocate of Shostakovich, responsible for the American performance and recording premieres of his last three symphonies, as well as the long-suppressed Fourth. This 15th from 1972 is eloquent and gorgeously played, with the famous Philadelphia sound richly recorded in a resonant church acoustic. The High Performance remastering is spectacular, erasing all memory of the original gritty vinyl incarnation and, coupled with Emil Gilels' definitive 1966 performance of the Second Piano Sonata, makes a most attractive bargain.

This album marks the second release of the Carducci’s Shostakovich 15 project, which includes performances of the complete cycles of the Shostakovich Quartets in cities including Washington DC, London, Oxford, Cardiff, Bogota and concerts throughout the UK to mark the 40th anniversary of the composer’s death. Described by The Strad as presenting “a masterclass in unanimity of musical purpose, in which severity could melt seamlessly into charm, and drama into geniality”, the Carducci Quartet is recognized as one of today’s most successful string quartets. This release contrasts Shostakovich’s first two string quartets with the seventh – composed in memory of his late wife Nina. In composing his quartets prior to No. 7, Shostakovich had scrupulously followed a predetermined sequence of keys: according to this, the work should have been in E flat major. However Shostakovich, significantly, chose to break this pattern by writing his new quartet in F sharp minor, the key associated with such anguished music as Peter’s remorse in Bach’s St John Passion, and – particularly close to Shostakovich’s heart – Mahler’s unfinished Tenth Symphony.

In the second of his recordings for Linn, charismatic pianist Simon Trpčeski performs Shostakovich’s two Piano Concertos with the outstanding Janáček Philharmonic Ostrava under Orchestre National de France’s new Musical Director Cristian Măcelaru. Shostakovich’s impish First Piano Concerto exudes the carefree attitude and sassy swagger of the young composer, and proves a perfect match with Simon’s playful pianism and Andrei Kavalinsky’s thundering trumpet. Written as a birthday present (and what a present!) for the composer’s son Maxim, the Second Piano Concerto is an uncharacteristically light-hearted piece given the doom and gloom of the time. Simon’s fiendish virtuosity and musical intelligence revel in this energetic piano favourite. As a generous encore, Makedonissimo’s violinist Aleksandar Krapovski and cellist Alexander Somov join Simon for Shostakovich’s Piano Trio No. 2. A must have album!

“Increasingly, Shostakovich's music is captivating people all over the world and appealing to their deepest emotions. Almost like no other, it bears witness to a traumatic political epoch while remaining a timeless expression of existential human feeling and experience. For me personally,” said conductor Mariss Jansons, who died last year, “Shostakovich is one of the most serious and sincere composers of them all.” After the Sixth, Seventh, and Tenth Symphonies, BR-KLASSIK is now also releasing the Fifth Symphony by this important composer – performed live by the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks under its long-time chief conductor Mariss Jansons. After accusations of formalism directed against Shostakovich in a critical Pravda article had forced the composer to withdraw his Fourth Symphony (it remained shelved until after Stalin's death), the Fifth, written in 1937, was a phenomenal success. It premiered on November 21, 1937 under the young conductor Yevgeny Mravinsky in the Great Hall of the Leningrad Philharmonic. During the applause, which it seemed would never end, Mravinsky waved the score above his head for a good half hour - making it quite clear that the applause was for Shostakovich alone. Officially, the work was interpreted as the return of a prodigal son to the guidelines of Stalinist cultural policy. To this day the music has lost none of its fascination, and the Fifth Symphony ranks as one of Shostakovich’s best-known works.

Includes work(s) by Dmitri Shostakovich. Ensemble: Moscow Chamber Orchestra. Conductor: Constantine Orbelian.

Founded nearly eighty years ago, the Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne enjoys an enviable reputation and has welcomed the greatest artists as its guests, from Clara Haskil and Alfred Cortot to Murray Perahia and Martha Argerich, from Paul Hindemith to Günter Wand. Despite its long history, the orchestra has had only six musical directors, including Armin Jordan from 1973 to 1985. The young American conductor Joshua Weilerstein succeeded Christian Zacharias in 2015. In addition to his conducting skills and his interest in rare repertory, he has also brought a love of musical outreach. His very popular podcast, ‘Sticky Notes’, discusses music in an accessible way. This recording is devoted to Shostakovich’s Chamber Symphonies opp.73a and 83a, which are Rudolf Barshai’s arrangements of the String Quartets nos. 3 and 4. Barshai, one of the leading violists of his time, was a friend of Shostakovich and their collaboration was long and intensive. The chamber orchestra arrangements of these famous quartets offer a completely different perspective on the original works and were praised by Shostakovich himself, who reportedly said of one of them that it ‘sounded better than the original’. As a complement to the two works, Joshua Weilerstein shares his interpretation in a bonus spoken word track.

Shostakovich's film score to Hamlet is one of his finest, possibly because it's a serious film rather than a socialist-realist potboiler, and the composer's moody, mostly spare music supports the action with unfailing accuracy and makes compelling listening on its own. The well-known suite leaves out a lot of music, and while there's inevitably a degree of repetition involved, this complete recording is very welcome for its inclusion of such segments as "Hamlet's Parting from Ophelia", "Hamlet's Monologue", "Ophelia's Descent into Madness", "Hamlet at Ophelia's Grave", and "The Cemetery".

As you may have guessed from the titles, the added music creates a considerably darker overall impression than does the suite, and this in a work that begins with the "whip-crack" motive from the third movement of Shostakovich's not-exactly-jocose Thirteenth Symphony "Babi Yar". So it may not be the most emotionally varied score, but it does sound very Russian and very much like late Shostakovich, and conductor Dmitry Yablonsky treats it accordingly. He and his orchestra bring just as much conviction and intensity (try "The Ghost") as they would to one of the symphonies, and Naxos' sonics are vivid. Be sure, however, to get the regular stereo CD: the SACD is a failure, with way too much stuff coming from the rear channels. Definitely worth owning.

--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

Full review from FANFARE Magazine:
Shakespeare’s indecisive hero played a persistent role in Shostakovich’s life. In 1932, the composer completed incidental music for a controversial stage production directed by Nikolai Akimov. Five years later, when the Fifth Symphony was completed, some commentators referred to it as the “Hamlet” Symphony because of its brooding and equivocal moods, and the composer himself did not escape comparisons with the great Dane. Given Shostakovich’s sizable experience with film scores, it was only natural for him to write the score to Grigori Kozintsev’s Hamlet in 1964. Over the years, there have been several recordings of the eight-item suite (op. 116a) that Lev Atovmian assembled from the score. This CD, however, appears to be the premiere recording of the complete score, including music that didn’t even make it into the film.

At this juncture, one usually makes the comment that Shostakovich’s film scores do not represent his best work, and that they shouldn’t be considered “typical” of his output. Even though I’ve made them myself, I’ve often found those comments a little condescending, however, and with Hamlet, we have music that is both top-of-the-line and typical of Shostakovich. To put this score in a chronological perspective, it is flanked by the 13th and 14th Symphonies, and it was completed in the same year as the Ninth and 10th String Quartets—hardly bad company! There’s much in Hamlet that is reminiscent of the composer’s very best work from this period. Shostakovich probably could write film music in his sleep, but it is clear that Hamlet engaged his attention and creativity in a very profound way.

Granted, not all the music is brilliant and essential—even 14-second fanfares have been included among these 23 tracks—but there’s much that is worth hearing outside of Atovmian’s suite. For example, the wonderfully eerie “Story of Horatio and the Ghost” might have been an outtake from the first movement of the 11th Symphony, and the five-minute “Hamlet’s Parting from Ophelia” proves once again that a note of music is worth a thousand words. A gently tinkling harpsichord aptly evokes both a courtly atmosphere and Ophelia’s emotional fragility. Hamlet’s music reveals his destructiveness and his nobility. And so it goes. Yes, there is some bombast here, yet it is bombast with a purpose—to evoke the empty pageantry of Claudius’s Elsinore, for example.

Yablonsky not only conducts this music passionately, he also plays it in its proper cinematic order. This is not true of Atovmian’s suite, in which the Players arrive after (!) they perform The Murder of Gonzago. As I suggested above, a few of the shorter cues are intrusive, but all in all, this CD is a satisfying listening experience, no matter what standard of judgment one uses.

Yablonsky is the son of pianist Oxana Yablonskaya, and he is accumulating quite a series of fine recordings for Naxos. Fine-sounding ones too, as the engineering is superb. Thirty years ago, who would have guessed that Russians would be making audiophile recordings in 2003? (I understand that there is an SACD version of this disc, too.)

If I had reviewed this disc a little earlier, I might have put it on my Want List for the year. The music, performances, and engineering are of the highest quality, and I can think of no better way to spend a leaden August (or November!) evening than to play this CD over and over again—which is exactly what I have done.

Raymond Tuttle, FANFARE

Click Here for the complete Naxos Film Music Classic Series

Shostakovich scored dozens of films, starting in the silent era with a long, almost symphonic, accompaniment to Kozintsev and Trauberg’s New Babylon (1929). At the last minute the censors imposed heavy cuts on the film and there wasn’t time even to begin to try and make Shostakovich’s music fit what was left of the film. For his next film Odna (Alone) Shostakovich decided to make things easier for everybody and wrote music in easily assimilated portions ranging in duration from about 30 seconds to four and a half minutes. There are 48 cues on this CD – the complete score for the film.

Odna was planned as the first Soviet sound film but, due to the bulkiness of the sound recording equipment, it was shot, on location, as a silent with the soundtrack being added later at the Leningrad studios. As the soundtrack was poor, title cards were used as well as sound – hence the description of a sound/silent film. The plot is simplicity itself. Elena, a young teacher looks forward to a life with her husband-to-be in Leningrad but she is sent to the Altai, on the Mongolian border. She tries to teach the children, and they enjoy their lessons, but the parents need them to tend the sheep. Elena nearly dies in a snowdrift but is rescued “thanks to the Soviet State”, as a title card tells us. Finally, Elena leaves the Altai and returns to Leningrad, but we have no idea if her presence in the village has made any difference to the lives if the people she leaves behind. Shostakovich is much more positive in his closing music, giving a quite optimistic view.

The music covers a wide variety of styles and moods. There’s a lot of the kind of music we know from The Age of Gold, and the opera The Nose, circus music similar to that which appears in the first movement of the 4th Symphony, highly serious (but with a slight thumbing of the nose) for the village Soviet chairman waking up (track 29), but there’s also high drama, especially in the scenes where Elena nearly freezes to death, a very evocative use of the Theremin here.

The booklet tells us that this is one of Shostakovich’s best scores. It’s certainly one of his most varied and it’s easy to follow the slender plot. There’s also some delightful orchestrations – I particularly loved the duet for bassoons and harp and the duet for oboe and wood blocks! – ranging from full orchestra to chamber music combinations. You can hear the orchestral sound Shostakovich became famous for, sometimes in embryo, in almost every track.

The restoration of the score was obviously a labour of love. Much time and effort has obviously gone into the making of this disk. The performance is excellent: the orchestra is on top form and the soloists are, mercifully, lacking the kind of wide vibrato we used to get from Soviet singers.

All in all, an exciting release which finally does justice to a score we have only really known, in tantalisingly incomplete form, through Rozhdestvensky’s short Suite - which he recorded in the early 1980s, and which is now available in a 14 disk set from BMG/Melodia, or as a 2 disk set of Manuscripts from Different Years 74321 59058 2 - a version of the Suite by Dmitri Smirnov for wind ensemble (Netherlands Wind Ensemble, Meladina Record MRCD0021) and a Russian Disc issue of 1995 (RD CD 10 007) which included 29 cues from the score.

This is the real thing and it was worth the wait. Recording and notes are superb.

This Naxos series of Film Music Classics simply goes from strength to strength.

-- Bob Briggs, MusicWeb International

Despite the aging mono sonics (a touch constricted but otherwise perfectly clear and well balanced) Karel Ancerl conducts as finely shaped and intensely musical an interpretation of this symphonic megalith as we have any right to expect. Leave it to him, virtually alone among conductors, to realize that the great exordium following the "battle sequence" is not just the movement's dynamic climax, but also is the recapitulation of its opening themes. Ancerl accordingly treats the passage as a gradual accelerando back to Tempo I when most conductors hold back for "expressive" effect. The result not only increases the music's dramatic tension and urgency, but it also gives this sprawling movement an uncommon amount of structural strength.


The Scherzo flows pertly with typically terrific wind playing, while Ancerl wrings every drop of feeling from the long Adagio, its climax perfectly placed. He also builds the finale to a grandiose but never annoying or merely banal conclusion, and with amazing finesse gets through the dead acreage before the final build-up. The tangy tones of the Czech Philharmonic ensure that even the first movement's oft-repeated "invasion" theme sports an unusually enticing range of timbres and colors. The sonic limitations obviously mean that this recording won't be a first version of the "Leningrad" Symphony for most collectors--for that go to Bernstein (DG) or Järvi (Chandos)--but if you enjoy the work, or think it's nothing but a bombastic potboiler, Ancerl and his orchestra's supreme musicianship might just change your mind.
--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

Dmitrij Dmitrievic Shostakovich was one of the most influential, praised and widely performed composers of the twentieth century: his unmistakable style has left an indelible mark on the aesthetic taste of the modern listener and on the DNA of the contemporary orchestra. Nevertheless, up to this day, his piano works have been rarely played by performers and listened to by the public, almost obscured by the exceptional nature of his extensive chamber and symphonic production. Considering his outstanding ease of writing and well-proven ability to compose music under all kinds of circumstances – even unfavorable ones –, Shostakovich’s piano production for piano appears relatively small and, above all, sporadic. These pages are not less extraordinary because of that. On the contrary, many of them show a degree of ambition and depth of purpose that are not second to those of his chamber and symphonic masterpieces.