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Shostakovich: Works Unveiled / Nicolas Stavy
BIS

Shostakovich: Works Unveiled / Nicolas Stavy

$21.99

Details

Composer
Dmitri Shostakovich
Artist
Ekaterina Bakanova, Alexandros Stavrakakis, Nicolas Stavy, Florent Jodelet, Sueye Park, Cedric Tiber
Format
SACD
Discs
1
Label
BIS
Released
Jan 06, 2023
Catalog #
BIS-2550
UPC
7318599925509

About

This release is the fruit of the French pianist Nicolas Stavy’s efforts to uncover unknown works by Dmitri Shostakovich. Spanning some fifty years of the composer’s career, these rarities include early piano pieces influenced by Chopin and the fragment of an unfinished violin sonata, but is bookended by arrangements of symphonic music, by Shostakovich himself and by Mahler, a constant influence.

The album opens with the most substantial work on the disc, Shostakovich’s arrangement of his late, great Fourteenth Symphony (1969) for soprano, bass, string orchestra and percussion. With texts by poets including Guillaume Apollinaire, Federico García Lorca and Rainer Maria Rilke, the work evokes death, reaching great emotional depths. Rather than ‘just’ making a piano transcription for rehearsal purposes, Shostakovich included a percussion part as well as one for celesta, in order to reproduce sounds that would be impossible to imitate on the piano alone. This is followed by the substantial fragment of a sonata for violin and piano dated 1945 and four short piano pieces composed around 1917-1919, which reveal a very young composer and demonstrate his surprising individuality and maturity. The final work on the disc is an arrangement of the opening 95 bars of Gustav Mahler's Tenth Symphony which Shostakovich probably made during the 1920s for personal study purposes and to demonstrate the work to his fellow members in one of Leningrad’s two Mahler Societies. In Shostakovich’s transcription for piano four hands, Stavy is joined by Cédric Tiberghien.

REVIEW:

Nicolas Stavy’s painstaking trawl through the Shostakovich Archives has brought together some completely unknown works from the composer’s vast output with a major masterpiece recorded for the first time in a completely different guise. Admittedly, not everything here is of the highest quality. For instance, the earliest music, a collection of four short piano pieces composed during Shostakovich’s teenage years, is fluent but largely derivative.

Yet the rest of the album has much to offer. From the 1920s, we get a deftly scored arrangement of the first 95 bars to the Adagio of Mahler’s Tenth Symphony for piano duet, which is beautifully performed by Stavy and Cédric Tiberghien. Another tantalisingly brief fragment is the large-scale opening section of an unfinished Violin Sonata dating from 1945 which is given a powerfully committed performance by Stavy and Sueye Park.

However, the most substantial discovery is undoubtedly the composer’s reduction for piano and percussion of the orchestral score to his 14th Symphony. Whether or not Shostakovich conceived this arrangement as a viable performing alternative to the original, rather than a useful vehicle for helping the vocal soloists learn their parts, its intimate scoring works particularly effectively in the more reflective settings such as the opening ‘De profundis’, ‘O Delvig, Delvig!’ and ‘The Poet’s Death’. Elsewhere, despite Stavy’s phenomenal mastery of the enormously tricky piano writing, I miss some of the cut and thrust of Shostakovich’s pungent string writing, especially in the frenzied musical argument of ‘Loreley’ and in the furious outburst of anger unleashed at the end of ‘The Zaporozhian Cossacks’ Answer to the Sultan of Constantinople’.

-- BBC Music Magazine

Tracklist 17 tracks

  1. 1 I. De profundis: Adagio 05:25
    Track
    1
    Title
    I. De profundis: Adagio
    Duration
    05:25
    Composer
    Dmitri Shostakovich
    Performer
    Alexandros Stavrakakis, Nicolas Stavy, Florent Jodelet
  2. 2 II. Malagueña: Allegretto - 03:01
    Track
    2
    Title
    II. Malagueña: Allegretto -
    Duration
    03:01
    Composer
    Dmitri Shostakovich
    Performer
    Ekaterina Bakanova, Nicolas Stavy, Florent Jodelet
  3. 3 III. Loreley: Allegro molto - 09:46
    Track
    3
    Title
    III. Loreley: Allegro molto -
    Duration
    09:46
    Composer
    Dmitri Shostakovich
    Performer
    Ekaterina Bakanova, Alexandros Stavrakakis, Nicolas Stavy, Florent Jodelet
  4. 4 IV. The Suicide: Adagio 07:14
    Track
    4
    Title
    IV. The Suicide: Adagio
    Duration
    07:14
    Composer
    Dmitri Shostakovich
    Performer
    Ekaterina Bakanova, Nicolas Stavy, Florent Jodelet
  5. 5 V. On the Watch: Allegretto - 03:10
    Track
    5
    Title
    V. On the Watch: Allegretto -
    Duration
    03:10
    Composer
    Dmitri Shostakovich
    Performer
    Ekaterina Bakanova, Nicolas Stavy, Florent Jodelet
  6. 6 VI. Madam, look!: Allegretto - 01:58
    Track
    6
    Title
    VI. Madam, look!: Allegretto -
    Duration
    01:58
    Composer
    Dmitri Shostakovich
    Performer
    Ekaterina Bakanova, Alexandros Stavrakakis, Nicolas Stavy, Florent Jodelet
  7. 7 VII. In the Santé Prison: Adagio 10:15
    Track
    7
    Title
    VII. In the Santé Prison: Adagio
    Duration
    10:15
    Composer
    Dmitri Shostakovich
    Performer
    Alexandros Stavrakakis, Nicolas Stavy, Florent Jodelet
  8. 8 VIII. Reply of the Zaporozhye Cossacks to the Sultan of Constantinople: Allegro - 01:53
    Track
    8
    Title
    VIII. Reply of the Zaporozhye Cossacks to the Sultan of Constantinople: Allegro -
    Duration
    01:53
    Composer
    Dmitri Shostakovich
    Performer
    Alexandros Stavrakakis, Nicolas Stavy, Florent Jodelet
  9. 9 IX. O Delvig, Delvig!: Andante 05:07
    Track
    9
    Title
    IX. O Delvig, Delvig!: Andante
    Duration
    05:07
    Composer
    Dmitri Shostakovich
    Performer
    Alexandros Stavrakakis, Nicolas Stavy, Florent Jodelet
  10. 10 X. Death of the Poet: Largo - 05:41
    Track
    10
    Title
    X. Death of the Poet: Largo -
    Duration
    05:41
    Composer
    Dmitri Shostakovich
    Performer
    Ekaterina Bakanova, Nicolas Stavy, Florent Jodelet
  11. 11 XI. Conclusion: Moderato 01:15
    Track
    11
    Title
    XI. Conclusion: Moderato
    Duration
    01:15
    Composer
    Dmitri Shostakovich
    Performer
    Ekaterina Bakanova, Alexandros Stavrakakis, Nicolas Stavy, Florent Jodelet
  12. 12 Violin Sonata in G Minor: I. Moderato con moto (unfinished) 04:49
    Track
    12
    Title
    Violin Sonata in G Minor: I. Moderato con moto (unfinished)
    Duration
    04:49
    Composer
    Dmitri Shostakovich
    Performer
    Sueye Park, Nicolas Stavy
  13. 13 Funeral March in Memory of the Victims of the Revolution 01:21
    Track
    13
    Title
    Funeral March in Memory of the Victims of the Revolution
    Duration
    01:21
    Composer
    Dmitri Shostakovich
    Performer
    Nicolas Stavy
  14. 14 Nostalgia 02:27
    Track
    14
    Title
    Nostalgia
    Duration
    02:27
    Composer
    Dmitri Shostakovich
    Performer
    Nicolas Stavy
  15. 15 In the Forest 02:01
    Track
    15
    Title
    In the Forest
    Duration
    02:01
    Composer
    Dmitri Shostakovich
    Performer
    Nicolas Stavy
  16. 16 Bagatelle 01:16
    Track
    16
    Title
    Bagatelle
    Duration
    01:16
    Composer
    Dmitri Shostakovich
    Performer
    Nicolas Stavy
  17. 17 Symphony No. 10 in F-Sharp Major: I. Andante - Adagio (arr. D. Shostakovich for piano 4 hands) (fragment) 08:13
    Track
    17
    Title
    Symphony No. 10 in F-Sharp Major: I. Andante - Adagio (arr. D. Shostakovich for piano 4 hands) (fragment)
    Duration
    08:13
    Composer
    Gustav Mahler
    Performer
    Nicolas Stavy, Cédric Tiberghien