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Shostakovich: Jazz & Variety Suites / Litton, Singapore Symphony Orchestra
BIS

Shostakovich: Jazz & Variety Suites / Litton, Singapore Symphony Orchestra

$21.99

Details

Composer
Shostakovich, Dmitri
Artist
Litton
Format
SACD
Label
BIS
Released
Apr 01, 2022
Catalog #
BIS-2472
UPC
7318599924724

About

Dmitri Shostakovich was a versatile composer: popular and serious styles came to him with equal ease and are frequently found together in the same work. In his twenties, before the heavy hand of Soviet officialdom slapped him down in 1936, music of every kind poured out of him: symphonies, operas and full-length ballets but also a great amount of music for film and theatre. Here Andrew Litton leads the Singapore Symphony Orchestra in a program which explores this lighter side of a composer who is otherwise often regarded as unrelentingly serious.

The album opens with Suite for Jazz Orchestra No. 1, which Litton conducts from the piano. Consisting of three brief movements, it is the only truly original work on the disc, written in 1934 for a competition aimed at making ‘Soviet Jazz’ more respectable. The remaining suites are all reworkings of existing music, such as the ballets The Age of Gold – about the adventures of a Soviet football team visiting the decadent West – and The Limpid Stream, portraying a group of entertainers visiting an idyllic collective farm. The Suite for Variety Orchestra is a compilation that the composer made in the late 1950s from three film scores, a ballet movement and four piano pieces. Closing the album is Shostakovich’s 1927 orchestration of a Broadway classic, Vincent Youmans’ "Tea for Two," which had become a hit under the title "Tahiti Trot."

REVIEW:

Entitled Jazz & Variety, this album encompasses four of Shostakovich’s more popular-style suites, mainly drawn from his ballet and theatre scores. These range from the poker-faced, Kurt Weill-like stylization of 1920s dance music, complete with plunking banjo, in the Suite for Jazz Orchestra No. 1 (1934), via the Prokofiev-like burlesques of The Age of Gold – a 1930 ballet about the vicissitudes of a Soviet football team in the wicked West – to the more straightforwardly traditional ballet numbers of The Limpid Stream(1935/45) set on an idyllic collective farm, and the Suite for Variety Orchestra put together from various pieces from the 1950s.

One item, the Waltz from the Jazz Suite, recurs twice: more fully orchestrated in The Limpid Stream, and in yet a third arrangement with a different, more banal middle section, in the Variety Suite. The collection culminates in Shostakovich’s twinkling orchestration of a version of ‘Tea for Two’, entitled Tahiti Trot (1927). Yet, in the middle of all these frolics, the searing intensity of the extended Adagio from The Age of Gold reminds us of the other, tragic side of Shostakovich.

Andrew Litton and the Singapore Symphony Orchestra lavish more care and subtlety on these pieces than the quality of invention in some of the music maybe deserves, additionally flattered by BIS’s spacious recording – though the Jazz Suite might have more bite in a drier acoustic. Still, this is a superior collection for those who relish this lighter, sometimes naughtier side of Shostakovich.

-- BBC Music Magazine

Tracklist 21 tracks

  1. 1 I. Waltz 02:20
    Track
    1
    Title
    I. Waltz
    Duration
    02:20
    Composer
    Dmitri Shostakovich
    Performer
    Andrew Litton
    Ensemble
    Singapore Symphony Orchestra
    Conductor
    Andrew Litton
  2. 2 II. Polka 01:42
    Track
    2
    Title
    II. Polka
    Duration
    01:42
    Composer
    Dmitri Shostakovich
    Performer
    Andrew Litton
    Ensemble
    Singapore Symphony Orchestra
    Conductor
    Andrew Litton
  3. 3 III. Foxtrot (Blues) 03:46
    Track
    3
    Title
    III. Foxtrot (Blues)
    Duration
    03:46
    Composer
    Dmitri Shostakovich
    Performer
    Andrew Litton
    Ensemble
    Singapore Symphony Orchestra
    Conductor
    Andrew Litton
  4. 4 I. Introduction: Allegro non troppo 04:13
    Track
    4
    Title
    I. Introduction: Allegro non troppo
    Duration
    04:13
    Composer
    Dmitri Shostakovich
    Ensemble
    Singapore Symphony Orchestra
    Conductor
    Andrew Litton
  5. 5 II. Adagio 09:50
    Track
    5
    Title
    II. Adagio
    Duration
    09:50
    Composer
    Dmitri Shostakovich
    Ensemble
    Singapore Symphony Orchestra
    Conductor
    Andrew Litton
  6. 6 III. Polka: Allegretto 02:16
    Track
    6
    Title
    III. Polka: Allegretto
    Duration
    02:16
    Composer
    Dmitri Shostakovich
    Ensemble
    Singapore Symphony Orchestra
    Conductor
    Andrew Litton
  7. 7 IV. Dance: Allegro 02:08
    Track
    7
    Title
    IV. Dance: Allegro
    Duration
    02:08
    Composer
    Dmitri Shostakovich
    Ensemble
    Singapore Symphony Orchestra
    Conductor
    Andrew Litton
  8. 8 I. Waltz 02:29
    Track
    8
    Title
    I. Waltz
    Duration
    02:29
    Composer
    Dmitri Shostakovich
    Ensemble
    Singapore Symphony Orchestra
    Conductor
    Andrew Litton
  9. 9 II. Russian Popular Dance 02:12
    Track
    9
    Title
    II. Russian Popular Dance
    Duration
    02:12
    Composer
    Dmitri Shostakovich
    Ensemble
    Singapore Symphony Orchestra
    Conductor
    Andrew Litton
  10. 10 III. Gallop 01:50
    Track
    10
    Title
    III. Gallop
    Duration
    01:50
    Composer
    Dmitri Shostakovich
    Ensemble
    Singapore Symphony Orchestra
    Conductor
    Andrew Litton
  11. 11 IV. Adagio 07:07
    Track
    11
    Title
    IV. Adagio
    Duration
    07:07
    Composer
    Dmitri Shostakovich
    Performer
    Pei-Sian Ng
    Ensemble
    Singapore Symphony Orchestra
    Conductor
    Andrew Litton
  12. 12 V. Pizzicato: Allegretto 01:05
    Track
    12
    Title
    V. Pizzicato: Allegretto
    Duration
    01:05
    Composer
    Dmitri Shostakovich
    Ensemble
    Singapore Symphony Orchestra
    Conductor
    Andrew Litton
  13. 13 I. March 02:59
    Track
    13
    Title
    I. March
    Duration
    02:59
    Composer
    Dmitri Shostakovich
    Ensemble
    Singapore Symphony Orchestra
    Conductor
    Andrew Litton
  14. 14 II. Dance No. 1 02:56
    Track
    14
    Title
    II. Dance No. 1
    Duration
    02:56
    Composer
    Dmitri Shostakovich
    Ensemble
    Singapore Symphony Orchestra
    Conductor
    Andrew Litton
  15. 15 III. Dance No. 2 03:14
    Track
    15
    Title
    III. Dance No. 2
    Duration
    03:14
    Composer
    Dmitri Shostakovich
    Ensemble
    Singapore Symphony Orchestra
    Conductor
    Andrew Litton
  16. 16 IV. Little Polka 02:06
    Track
    16
    Title
    IV. Little Polka
    Duration
    02:06
    Composer
    Dmitri Shostakovich
    Ensemble
    Singapore Symphony Orchestra
    Conductor
    Andrew Litton
  17. 17 V. Lyric Waltz 02:16
    Track
    17
    Title
    V. Lyric Waltz
    Duration
    02:16
    Composer
    Dmitri Shostakovich
    Ensemble
    Singapore Symphony Orchestra
    Conductor
    Andrew Litton
  18. 18 VI. Waltz No. 1 03:21
    Track
    18
    Title
    VI. Waltz No. 1
    Duration
    03:21
    Composer
    Dmitri Shostakovich
    Ensemble
    Singapore Symphony Orchestra
    Conductor
    Andrew Litton
  19. 19 VII. Waltz No. 2 03:39
    Track
    19
    Title
    VII. Waltz No. 2
    Duration
    03:39
    Composer
    Dmitri Shostakovich
    Ensemble
    Singapore Symphony Orchestra
    Conductor
    Andrew Litton
  20. 20 VIII. Finale 02:00
    Track
    20
    Title
    VIII. Finale
    Duration
    02:00
    Composer
    Dmitri Shostakovich
    Ensemble
    Singapore Symphony Orchestra
    Conductor
    Andrew Litton
  21. 21 Tahiti Trot, Op. 16 (orchestral transcription of Youmans' Tea for Two) 04:17
    Track
    21
    Title
    Tahiti Trot, Op. 16 (orchestral transcription of Youmans' Tea for Two)
    Duration
    04:17
    Composer
    Dmitri Shostakovich
    Ensemble
    Singapore Symphony Orchestra
    Conductor
    Andrew Litton