SHOSTAKOVICH: String Quartets Nos. 1, 8 and 9

SHOSTAKOVICH: String Quartets Nos. 4, 6 and 7

SHOSTAKOVICH: Piano Trios Nos. 1 and 2

SHOSTAKOVICH Piano Sonata No. 2. 3 Pieces. A Child’s Exercise Book. Murzilka. Preludes, op. 2/2,3,4,15,18. The Limpid Stream: Excerpts (trans. Shostakovich) • Konstantin Scherbakov (pn) • NAXOS 8.570092 (58:26)


During his lifetime, the artistic reputation of Dmitri Shostakovich was closely related to political ideology. Current revisionism, pace Solomon Volkov’s questionable edition of the composer’s own testimony, would have us believe that Shostakovich was a secretive anti-communist, filling his music with code to such an effect. There is also, however, ample evidence that the great man was an original Bolshevik who happened to clash with oppressive bureaucracies, especially during the Stalin years, which coincided with the mature period of his output. The controversy is still unresolved, but at least the actual music is no longer married to the debate. As we pass the 100-year mark for Shostakovich, his reputation is stronger than ever, not only for the great symphonies that established his fame, but also the smaller works, most notably the string quartets, his lovely vocal output, and—of the material at hand—solo piano music.


The Piano Sonata No. 2 is by far the most substantial piece here. It comes from 1943, but aside from the underlying melancholy that is heard in most of Shostakovich’s work, this does not sound like a war piece. It has a slithering beauty about it and a subtle complexity that reminds us that the composer, who gave the premiere of the piece, was himself an excellent pianist. The construction emphasizes the composer’s devotion to classical forms, as expressed in his deeply personal voice. The first and second movements are rather inward and even mysterious, the Largo sparse nearly to the point of minimalism. The finale is a typical Shostakovich technical tour de force , a theme and variations set of tremendous ingenuity and power.


The rest of the program is enjoyable, but second rate in the composer’s output. The Limpid Stream is a ballet score from 1935 (here, obviously, reduced to solo piano) meant to follow the dictates of socialist realism. Ironically, it was premiered just before the infamous denunciation of the opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk , but it, too, failed the Stalinist standard for music of the people, and was also criticized as such in print. The music is hardly threatening, being essentially a collection of lively dances, with little of the bucolic nature deceptively suggested by the title. The rest of the music here is basically juvenilia, written either by a very young Shostakovich, or, in the case of A Child’s Exercise Book , for children, specifically his daughter Galina. Murzilka , probably written in the mid to late 1940s, is one of his brilliant little dashes, clocking in at 49 seconds.


Siberian-born Konstantin Scherbakov, who is doing a series of the solo piano music of Shostakovich for Naxos, seems to be the ideal interpreter of this music. His technique can produce both delicacy and brute power, and he has the full measure of the composer’s dramatic sensibility. Johan Schmidt, on the Cypres label, finds a delicacy in the music that is disarming, but not as true to the spirit. Ashkenazy, on Decca, is somewhere in between, with, not surprisingly, brave and dazzling playing that is more cosmopolitan than Scherbakov’s. Both Schmidt and Ashkenazy have more compelling overall programs than Scherbakov, the former including the complete preludes, the latter with a diverse group of shorter works. But the Decca release is twice the price of the Naxos, and the SACD sound is not noticeably more realistic than the Naxos. So, even though the Scherbakov program is of decidedly mixed strength, I would not hesitate to recommend it for the sonata alone. The rest is whipped cream.


FANFARE: Peter Burwasser

For a less caustic, more ample-toned, and softer-edged set of Shostakovich Op. 34 Preludes than we usually hear, check out Konstantin Scherbakov. His performances contain many beautiful things. No. 2's whimsical scales and runs magically glide over the bar lines, while No. 9 and No. 12's whirling patterns are impressively controlled and supple--and the pianist articulates the marcato/legato interplay in No. 11 and No. 21 to perfection.


My criticism concerns Scherbakov's arch rubato within certain lyrical pieces. His little holdbacks and gratuitous ritards in No. 8, for example, undermine the effect of the composer's indicated ritards, which the pianist barely observes anyway. And a few exposed wrong notes easily could have been corrected (the E-flat in No. 5, measure 14). Such blemishes, however, do not detract from Scherbakov's compelling pianism.


All the virtues Scherbakov brings to the Preludes equally apply to the composer's gnarly Aphorisms cycle and youthful Three Fantastic Dances. The pianist also sails through the First Sonata's unrelenting polytextural thickets and age-of-steel dissonances with maximum power and minimum struggle. Eleanor Thomason's superb engineering yields one of the finest sounding solo piano discs Naxos has produced.
--Jed Distler, ClassicsToday.com

Without doubt this is one of the finest all-round achievements by Naxos.

At the risk of courting the charge of hyperbole I would venture this CD as one of the most significant Shostakovich releases in recent years. Fine though the award-laden Petrenko symphony cycle undoubtedly is, let's be honest we already know that is an extraordinary group of works and most have received superb performances before. The score presented here is as significant as it is relatively unknown and this new recording can lay fair claim to being definitive. My reasoning runs as follows; Shostakovich was one of the most important Soviet composers. The Soviet Union was the first state to recognise the power of cinema to influence mass mood and opinion. In the late 1920s the cultural elite of the Soviet Union were still being empowered by the state to produce work that was radical and revolutionary. Exploring utopian ideals and cinema was regarded as being at the forefront of the new radical arts. In the era of Silent Cinema the dedicated film-score was still comparatively new and as such had to carry the dramatic and emotional non-visual weight of the story. Shostakovich had first-hand practical experience of playing for film - this gave him a practitioner’s insight into what would ‘work’ that was simply not part of the skill set of any composer before or probably since. As the liner accurately points out - for all the deprivation and residual violence abroad in the new Soviet State this was an age of idealism and hope. Shostakovich had yet to have his idealistic vision of communism curdled by the cynical realities of living in a totalitarian state. He poured into this score the best that the idiom would allow.
 
Whether measured by the yardstick of the history of cinema, the Soviet Union or simply as part of the Shostakovich oeuvre this is an important release. Add to that the fact that this recording offers the most complete, skilfully reconstructed and authentic - as far as it uses the original 14 player line-up - rendition of the score yet made. It becomes a compulsory purchase. This is the third release of Shostakovich film scores conducted by Mark Fitz-Gerald. Very fine indeed though the previous two have been I consider this the best so far. Not that the earlier issues lacked for anything in terms of performing or interpretative quality - simply that this work is more significant than the others on just about every level. Its importance is reflected in the fact that elements of the score have been recorded several times in the past although only the - also fine - version from James Judd on Capriccio with the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra comes close to matching the actual quantity of music recorded. The next most extended sequence - from Valeri Polyansky and his Russian State Symphony Orchestra on Chandos (CHAN 9600) - contains some 44 minutes of the score - less than half of Fitz-Gerald’s epic traversal. A pithier selection is offered by Gennady Rohzdestvensky (Russian Disc RDCD11064). This was my introduction to this score in its original Melodiya LP version (later reissued as ASD3381) and I still enjoy its ribald cabaret character. My sole observation of this new Naxos performance - and it is an observation not a quibble - is that the chamber scale and super-refined quality of the playing fractionally detracts from the pure theatre of the work. When I was a student at the Guildhall School of Music in London - around 1983 I guess - they staged a viewing of this score accompanied by one of the college orchestras. To this day the power of the film and accompanying score lives with me. I strongly suggest that any readers who ever have the opportunity to see this performed live should leap at the chance. It is a magnificent piece of work and one that shows how even at the tender age of 23 Shostakovich understood the compelling power of the moving image. The very valid argument advanced by Fitz-Gerald for using chamber scale forces is that these are the maximum resources that Shostakovich would have had for the premiere. My counter-argument is that every silent movie score would be written with a degree of inherent elasticity. I find it hard to imagine for a moment that Shostakovich would not have preferred more players at the premiere - certainly many of the dramatic passages in the score do not sound as though they are intended for such a chamber group. That being said, Shostakovich was commissioned to provide a smaller orchestration suitable for use in the bulk of Soviet cinemas. Indeed reluctant musical directors often reverted to using generic music when the film was shown rather than attempting the complexities of this new score.
 
Every other recording has opted for a full standard orchestra. Although I do naturally veer towards the bigger sound the more I hear this performance the more I realise that this is a score full of proper music of considerable range and power. Initial impressions are of a riot of colour and witty referencing of popular period tunes from the Marseillaise to Offenbach. The New Babylon of the title refers to a department store which in turn is a metaphor for the decadent Paris pre the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. The ensuing uprising and short-lived Paris Commune provided the early Soviet State with a historic precedent for their own revolution. Lessons learnt from the failure of the Commune influenced the thinking of both Marx and Lenin. Musical experts differ on whether Shostakovich used these melodies because they embodied all things despicably bourgeois or simply because they are rather good tunes. I tend towards the latter opinion - any young composer who can choose as his first dramatic work a setting of Gogol - The Nose - with its dyspeptic view of authority and institutions is not going to become a star-struck-slogan-wielding-party-line-puller two opus numbers later. At the heart of Shostakovich’s abiding genius is the acidic cynicism that clots and curdles even his most superficially benign music.
 
Fitz-Gerald conducts the Basel Sinfonietta and they prove to be stunningly fine collaborators. The scoring is for a string quartet plus bass, a woodwind quintet and a brass group of a second horn, two trumpets - although the second is there simply to relieve the work-load on the first player rather than having an independent part - and a trombone. The line-up is completed by a piano and three percussion. Again this number allows for ease of changes rather than necessity. The use of this essentially chamber ensemble creates an aural world that instantly delineates the composer's deft scoring. For the first time I heard a positively Gallic wit at work, very much along the lines of Ibert's Divertissement although, as always with Shostakovich, you feel a bleak cold despair might be lingering in the shadows. The spirit of "eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we die" clouds the celebrations. Another fascinating characteristic is developed here by the composer. In collaboration with the film-makers Shostakovich chose not to "illustrate the frame". When critics wish to deride a work the ultimate insult is to say its sounds like film music. This is a short-hand for saying it treats emotions/ideas/situations in an obvious and direct manner - in other words it illustrates the frame. Shostakovich does the reverse - if the image is happy, the music is sad, epic - petty. Its a crazy almost anarchic ploy but one that makes for an extraordinarily powerful juxtaposition of sight and sound. The problem we have here is that we are divorced from the image and wonderful though that is it cannot be anything less than a fraction of the whole.
 
Across the two discs the music is presented as a continuous flow of music as it occurred in each of the film's eight reels. The abiding impression is of a kaleidoscopic riot of sounds and impressions, fragments of musical stories, passing characters and changing mood. There is a hedonistic delight in the sheer indulgence of influence and pastiche. No real surprise to read that the original score quickly fell into disuse - it was both too hard for the average cinema player and too subversive for musicians brought up on a diet of illustrative generic music and excerpted 'classics'. From a historical perspective the quite remarkable thing is that as late as his Op.145 - his Suite on verses by Michaelangelo Shostakovich was applying exactly the same principle of contrast. There a verse with the slightly daunting title Immortality is set to an accompaniment of a piccolo whistling a tune any paperboy would be proud of. Back with New Babylon Fitz-Gerald has more practical experience of conducting this score in context with the film than any other person. This deep knowledge converts into a performance that is perfectly paced and remarkably finds a unity, a through-line in the midst of the mayhem. Allied to the virtuosic playing of his Swiss Orchestra and you will appreciate the level of achievement. The superlatives do not stop there. The engineering is first rate. The sound is quite close, certainly very detailed but it treads the tricky narrow line between large chamber group or small orchestra. The scale of the group is very effectively caught allowing the intimate passages to beguile while the bigger sequences have an impressive impact. Yes I do miss the sheer extra weight that Judd is able to deploy or the uniquely sly and sarcastic Rozhdestvensky. I repeat, the more I listened the more I was converted to the style of this version.

The booklet is surely Naxos' finest yet. Once one gets past the obligatory I-need-to-get-my-eyes-tested minute font this is packed with fascinating information, film stills and even a facsimile page of the original score. Fitz-Gerald has had to reconstruct the final part of the final reel because late in the film's production the ending changed turning the original bleak ending into something more positive. Fascinatingly we have two essays by Shostakovich scholars which give different interpretations for this change. One by David Robinson feels the changes were artistically driven whilst the other by John Riley cites political expediency. Both are full of fascinating insights. Riley provides a detailed synopsis and the notes are completed by an article by Fitz-Gerald outlining the long overdue restoration and reappraisal of this very important score. Don’t listen to this score expecting the profundity of the composer’s greatest work - that was never the remit here. Treated as a musico-social document - as well as containing much wonderfully entertaining music - this is a magnificent achievement from all concerned from composer to performers and the production team.

Curiously for a disc that is literally definitive it does not make me want to throw away either of the two other versions I cherish. Both Judd and Rozhdestvensky in their very differing ways offer valid alternative insights into this box of delights of a score. Judd with his full orchestra gains in impact during the set-piece sequences whilst Rozhdestvensky benefits from an authentically edgy Russian sound and gleeful eccentricity that is quite wonderful. The extra music that has been constructed to cover the discarded ending is effective and suitable but you will have made your mind up about this score and the performance way before that final sequence is reached. Fitz-Gerald achieves an ideal balance with his super-slick players able to slip from queasy waltz to buffoon’s gallop or poignant interlude in an instant. Remarkable results are achieved by ensembles these days in hot-house conditions of read/record. However when you hear a well rehearsed, convincingly argued performance of music with which the players are familiar the benefits are both obvious and great.

Without doubt this is one of the finest all-round achievements by Naxos. 

– Nick Barnard, MusicWeb International

This disc may be aimed more at the Shostakovich completist, but it's no less wonderful for that. The Girlfriends is a major film score dating from the same time in the 1930s as the scandal surrounding Stalin's denunciation of the opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk District. Scored lightly, for string quartet, piano, trumpet, and larger forces only in a couple of numbers, the music is mostly lyrical, attractive, and (given the composer and the period) remarkably sensitive. Some of it had to be reconstructed from the actual film soundtrack, but conductor Mark Fitz-Gerald has done his job excellently, and he leads a sensitive and cogent performance of the 23 brief movements that comprise the complete score.

Rule, Britannia! and Salute to Spain both fall into the composer's Socialist Realist hackwork, but I have to confess that the music is fun: brash, often militant, noisy, and unashamedly populist. The former strongly recalls the musical language of the Third Symphony, only it's less garish and more tuneful. There seems to be some confusion concerning one of the songs in Salute to Spain, "Miy Idyom", which means "We are going [on foot]" but that the note-writer translates for some strange reason as "My Idiom". In any case, no one knows what song was actually intended for the stage production, so an anti-Fascist Spanish Civil War song makes an appropriate substitute. Fitz-Gerald's conducting is really exciting in these two suites, and the orchestral playing is excellent as well.

Potentially the most interesting item here is the six-and-one-half-minute incomplete movement of what Shostakovich originally planned as his Ninth Symphony. Fans of the composer will recognize one of the themes as a loud version of the Tenth Symphony's first-movement second subject (the limping waltz for clarinet). As for the rest, it's clear why Shostakovich abandoned his initial effort: the remaining ideas (or should I say "idea", as there's only one) are uninteresting, the music uniformly loud and heavily scored. Still, as I said, this is a disc for connoisseurs, and you can only admire the composer's self-discipline in scrapping this effort in favor of the delightful Ninth Symphony we all know and love. Go for it.

--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

The Execution of Stepan Razin is a sort of sequel to the 13th Symphony, in that it sets a poem by Yevtushenko and even shares some thematic elements. It really is a magnificent work, and at half an hour, a major statement. Shostakovich put all of his considerable skill as a composer of film music into making the accompaniments as colorful as possible, while the choral writing and passages for bass solo are thrilling. Why it's not better known remains a mystery: it deserves to be as popular as Prokofiev's Alexander Nevsky or Rachmaninov's The Bells.


This is a very exciting performance, with fine work from the chorus and a terrific orchestral contribution making for climaxes of terrifying impact. Bass soloist Charles Robert Austin lacks the last degree of Russian depth to his tone, and he has a tendency to shout in order to compensate for the lack of weight, but he gets through the part with his honor intact. If you don't know this spectacular piece, here at last is an easy and inexpensive way to hear it.


I enjoyed the couplings too, though they are not significant Shostakovich. October is a typical piece of Socialist Realism close in tone to the 12th Symphony, but it's very exciting and effectively written, and only the obligatory triumphant ending, which Shostakovich makes no attempt to reconcile with the tone of the rest of the piece, lets it down a bit. Once again, the performance has the necessary grit and drive.


The Four Fragments bear a slight relationship to the music of the Fourth Symphony (the goofy waltz in the finale, especially), but are so, well, fragmentary that I wonder why they are played at all. In last analysis, they remain a curiosity and little more, but I can't argue with including them to round out a program nicely organized as "sequels and prequels" to various symphonies. Very fine sound, with a big, rich bass response that suits the music well, seals the deal. Essential for Shostakovich fans. [3/22/2006]
--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

SHOSTAKOVICH: Cello Sonata (arr. for Viola) / Viola Sonata

SHOSTAKOVICH: Cello Concertos Nos. 1 and 2

This album contains works by Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich , transcribed by Rudolf Barshai. Barshai’s professional relationship with Shostakovich lasted until the composer’s passing in 1975. His transcriptions of Shostakovich’s works were ambitious, and served as a catalyst for many future re-workings from string ensemble to full orchestra. This album was recorded at the Concert Hall of the National Radio of Ukraine, Kiev, in October of 2014, the Kiev Soloists with Dmitry Yablonsky performing.

Konstantin Scherbakov's 24 Shostakovich Preludes and Fugues leapfrog to the head of a small yet distinguished class on disc, whose valedictorians include Tatiana Nikolaeva and Vladimir Ashkenazy. Time and again I am struck by expressive and textural novelties that inevitably result from Scherbakov's fastidious adherence to Shostakovich's markings. The pianist connects the A minor Prelude's scurrying 16th-notes with a seamless legato that still manages to allow each one to speak softly. He treats the D major Prelude's right-hand arpeggiated chords in a slightly detached manner in order to offset the left hand's cello-like legato line. In the F-sharp minor Fugue Scherbakov takes special care to differentiate the levels of soft dynamics. He maintains Fugue No. 15's marcatissimo directive with unyielding vehemence, while effortlessly clarifying the difficult-to-disentangle voices.


Those familiar with Nikolaeva's freer treatment of the 16th fugue's elaborate subject will be surprised at the profile and contrast it acquires when played in strict time, as Scherbakov does. As a result, the uneven duplets truly stand out from the even ones. On the other hand, the 14th Prelude's tremolos sometimes threaten to cover the melodic material. Here both Nikolaeva and the composer relegate these tremolos to a spooky background murmur, and make more of the motto theme's tenutos. And Scherbakov sometimes plays down Shostakovich's edgy humor. Yet these quibbles are about aesthetic choices, not interpretive faults, and really don't matter in the larger context of Scherbakov's achievement. His interpretations are thought out, deeply pondered, prepared to the nth degree, and played with a perfect fusion of technique and soul. Even listeners who consider these works arid and somewhat pedantic will change their minds after hearing Scherbakov. A triumph.
--Jed Distler, ClassicsToday.com

Acclaimed Chinese/American composer Bright Sheng has been fascinated by folk music for his entire career and Northern Lights is his first work to use Scandinavian folk music, exploring its kinship with American sources such as Appalachian and Bluegrass music. Inspired by ancient Chinese poetry, Melodies of a Flute captures deep and sensuous moods of love and longing, while Hot Pepper refers to the spicy cuisine of Si Chuan province. Bright Sheng combines Chinese and Western musical ideas to create luminous, deeply expressive and rhythmic scores, giving new meaning to the idea of music as a universal language.

Giovanni Sgambati was one of the most important figures in the Renaissance of Italian instrumental music that began in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Wagner arranged the publication of his first chamber works, calling him ‘a true, great and original talent’. Sgambati’s blending of Italianate lyricism and German rigour led to large-scale works of real historical significance. His overture Cola di Rienzo exemplifies his richness of characterisation while the First Symphony is a major statement of breadth and intensity, admired by Grieg and Saint-Saëns, and often conducted by Toscanini.

REVIEW:

A central figure in the arts in France during his lifetime, Déodat de Sévérac stressed the importance of distinctive regional character in music. He derived his inspiration from Catalonia and Provence, and the genial warmth of expression in his work is reflected in the radiant imagery of Baigneuses au soleil which was dedicated to Alfred Cortot. The two groups of En vacances, the first described as little romantic pieces of moderate difficulty, are dedicated to friends, relations or colleagues, while the Fantasy Sous les lauriers roses is dedicated to the memory of the composer’s teachers. Volume 1 (8.555855) of Jordi Masó’s survey is a Penguin Guide *** key recommendation.