Customer Reviews

Dmitri Shostakovich: Symphonies Nos. 4 & 10

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Eugene Ormandy, more than any other American conductor of his generation, had a special affinity for Shostakovich. His recording of the Fourth Symphony was made shortly after the world premiere some thirty years after it was written. That performance remains the best of the lot. Shostakovich is one composer whose music "plays itself" if you are intelligent enough to follow his directions. So many conductors labor under the delusion that they must make a piece of music "theirs." All too often, this means adding excessive amouts of 'interpretation' that only serves to distort or destroy the music. Ormandy was not immune to that syndrome, but, fortunately, it is not in evidence here. The Philadelphians give us a wonderful reading that is just right in all of its details. The phantasmagorica of this work needs no special emphasis - and that, clearly, is the genius of the composer. The later performance of the Tenth Symphony is also, just right. The tempi, phrasing and dynamics are on the mark (see the score, please), and there are no excesses of angst.

Since it has become fashionable to view Shostakovich as the chronicler of opression and doom, it is also fashionable to play his scores as if our entrails were lying bloodied, on the floor. This tends to make the pieces much more hysterical than they are. His music deserves better. Ormandy serves his composer admirably in these performances primarily by not letting the emotional elements run amok. Here we have two primary exmaples of "less is more."

Here is solid playing, and appropriate respect for the composer.

This performance of the Fourth dates all the way back to the early 60's, the height of the Cold War. As a teenager in the 60's, I owned the LP version of this work, and its cold Kafkaesque atmosphere never ceased to send chills down my spine. It made you really believe in the Evil Empire. Paradoxical, too, because one would wonder who was this Shostakovich? The man was a complete mystery. And if he was such a good Soviet, why had he created this cold Orwellian vision? Thirty years later, it remains the definitive Western version of the Dark Masterpiece. I also own the Rattle and the Rostropovich recordings of this work. But these other performances have never really impressed me like this early performance by Ormandy. As for the Tenth, it is one of the most recorded symphonies of DDS, and there are many fine versions out there. It too is a history of the Stalin era, though more laconic (except for the harsh scherzo charicature of "the leader and teacher"). Ormandy's version is good but, as the previous reviewer truthfully says, it is the Fourth which really shines in this pairing. Overall, this is an excellent introduction to the music of the twentieth century's greatest composer.

Critics worldwide have hailed these recordings for 40 years as among the best available in these two very dramatic Shostakovich symphonies. Ormandy was a collaborator with the composer and specialized in his music during the 1950s, releasing the first commercial recording of the Cello Conceto No. 1 with Rostropovich in a disk with Oistrakh's Violin Concerto that is still considered one of the best after all these years.

The Shostakovich 10th Symphony is not his most popular but is probably his greatest masterpiece in the form. Its description of national Russian anguish under the Stalin regime probably makes it less accessible for casual listeners, especially those that enjoy his less dramatic work in the 1st and 9th Symphonies.

The famous second movement of the 10th symphony is the searing portrait of Stalin the assassin, the national leader that destroyed many Russians and liquidated one of the composers closest friends during the purge of the 1930s, when it was said around the world that every family in Russia had at least one member in a Gulag.

While the symphony closes with optimism for a new post-Stalinist era, it otherwise projects the horrors of the Reign of Terror. Ormandy, along with a few other conductors, perfectly projects this sense of terror and anguish in this wonderful CD.

The Shostakovich 4th Symphony is often called his first Mahlerian symphony because it lacks a musical program and its musical ideas grow to garganutan proportions. Ormandy does the best work in this symphony -- which is among my favorite Shostakovich works -- I have ever heard in a recording. He is clearly preferable to Haitink, Previn and Rattle, all of whom lead the loud, bombastic secitons most unmusically. In addition, Ormandy's closing pages have an almost ethereal, New Age feeling, where lesser interpreters merely end the music.

It is difficult to overstate the greatness of this set, which has everything going for it. The cost is extremely modest, the Philadelphia Orchestra was in its glory during the period of these recordings, and the recording itself is in warm ADD sound the captures every nuance of Shostakovich's two dramatic creations.

I used to have an old lp recording of the fourth symphony with Ormandy and the PHO. But this copy that I got of the 4th and the 10th on cd are beyond description. I listen to all of my recordings with my earphones so I get all of the sounds and rythms very clearly.

I had always realized Shostakovich's homage to Mahler, but I heard others as well and the way that Shostakovich weaves them all in along with his own distinct sounds works absolutely wonderful.

For example, in the Fourth Symphony there was this unmistakable horn passage that no one could miss that was as if the horn had found the melody from Mahler's 7th Sym. and the 'song of the night tune' seems to be soaring out over the orchestra. To my surprise was Bartok and Stravinsky. I kept hearing passages similar to Bartok's 'Concerto for Orchestra' or his 'Orchestral Suites. And I swore that I was hearing little 'Rites of Spring' pop up hear and there. I am not saying that any of this was plageristic. I felt that it was all a sense of homage and so ingeniously inserted into his own music.

This was my first experience of hearing the tenth. So awesome and beautiful, and again these periods of homage that were so beautifully inserted into the music and help to fulfill Shostakovich's ideas. I also loved the cyclic style of the 10th and how that idea from the first movement kept showing up in ever new and creative ways.

Now for Ormandy and the PHO. Astounding! I have his recording of Shostakovich's fifth. I know that he recorded some others for RCA. I did once have no.13, 'Babi Yar', but have it no more. The brass was so clean and pure. The string section non pariel. as usual, was stunning in the fourth sym. and the 10th.
I would say that these recordings should be on any list for building an overall classical library, getting the true taste of non twelve-tone-row music that is considered contemporary and listen to the wonderful way the Shostakovich resolves some of the dissonances into wonderful tonic chords.

Can someone at Amazon put some pressure on Sony and RCA to re-release all of his great recordings. I am always wonderfully surprised by the quality of sound by these thirty and forty and nearly fifty year old recordings.

To begin with the bad news, the Ormandy 10th suffers from a case of routine and a lack of energy in the playing. When one has heard the unstoppable drive of Mravinsky or the opulence of the Berliners under Von Karajan, this performance of the 10th bares little repeat listening. There are some breathtaking moments in the first movement, but little else of inspiration.

The Fourth which Ormandy gave the American premere of, has every sense of the raw power that Kondrashin and Rozhdestvensky found. The Ormandy stiffness is there, and sometimes one would hope for a less restained brass section (Rozhdestvensky on the Russian Disc label) but there is great awe to be derived from this symphony. It is simply a revelation when one shudders as the final outburst of energy envelopes everything in the last movement before the mysterious ticking (also found in one of Katerina's arias in Lady Macbeth)of resignation itself slowly fades away.

Since the Ormandy 10th is weak and the Kondrashin and the Rattle 4th is withdrawn (sob!) the Rozhdestvensky is the top choice right now. Still, this disc is a great introduction to Shostakovich's masterful symphonies.

I have heard them all. Gergiev, Kondrassin, plus. I have seen it performed on two occasions in NY. This recording of the 4th was the first I ever heard and remains the very tops. A magnificent work performed as it was intended.
As far as the 10th. It ranks among the best as well. This orchestra has the haunting sonority and depth this symphony calls for.
An indispensable addition to any modern music collection.

The Fourth Symphony is by far the most mahlerian symphony of this notable composer.
Ormandy in this sense walked through the musical forest with splendid approach giving the essential insights demanded for this crucial and challenging work to play.
Listening the powerful strings of the Philadelphia in their golden years, you can consider this reading as unbeatable in any front you wish .
To Shostakovich the relationship of the composer in the Western World to his national community is haphazard and unpredictable. To those who feel their freedom , in the Western sense , the status of Shostakovich is that of a kept nightingale.
Does a relationship cease to be free when it becomes legalized ?
The relationship of the artist to the Soviet state might be compared to that a child to an authoritarian parent within strict limits.
The Shostakovich tenth is a macabre Symphony because the fate and the oppression in such state of things in which the Stalinist cage worked out as horror way of living . That is why it is not sufficiently melodius ; some others glorified in being compared to the etchings of Goya , the symphonies of Tchaikovsky and the canvasses of Delacroix .
The Russian soul lived ten centuries under the Zarist Domain . It says easy but please and stop and think just a moment . Ten centuries perhaps are not enough to build a special mood and even behavior patterns?
And , without pause came the Red Governement , and now in the name of the people you killed all those who are not with the Supreme voice : the enormous eye capable to go through the world and murder in Mexico to Leon Trostky ; so beware of terror means in these conditions , specially in the case of Shostakovich to whom his best friends were executed as a synchronized mechanism of intimidation .
To reconciliate the intolerance for the tragic in Soviet art , its guiding lights have invented a new form - optimistic tragedy - wherein the individual does indeed suffer a tragic end but it is seen somehow to be for the good of all .
Beware the difference with the purest expression of the Western World ; in which the individuality prevails above any ideology or natural principle . That is why it is difficult for you to find the term hero in the Western World sense - I insist - in the Russian history.
The essential facets given in this case for Ormandy are fundamental . He caught this existential anguish and knew paint it in tonal pulsations and melodic accents. The only recording which matchs with this one is the famous Mitropoulus - New York Philarmonic from the fifties.
Try to listen the tenth after you have walked for the previous symphonies , if not it will be very difficult for you to engage adequately with the real intentions of this work.
Excellent choice and best buy!
The quality sound is A-1

The Shostakovitch 4th has got to be the most ambitious, original, awe inspiring and beautiful work of this composer's entire output. Shortly after he wrote it, the oppression of Communist Russia emerged in full force and Shostakovitch,always a hairline away from exile and death in Siberia, withdrew this symphony and kept it securely hidden. It was not to be heard until the early 60's when the Philadelphia Orchestra performed it under the baton of Eugene Ormandy. In a word, this symphony and this recording are nothing short of astonishing!
It is perhaps one of the greatest tragedies in music history that Shostakovitch was not given free reign to compose as he wanted, for I believe this composer would have surpassed Prokofiev and even the mighty Stravinsky in originality and influence. Unfortunately, after hiding the 4th, Shostakovitch spent much of his musical output restraining himself to folk tunes and compositions designed to appease the ordinary. Once the shackles were removed, Shostakovitch still never again wrote anything quite like it and even the 11th, stunning as it may be, does not compare to the 4th.
Recently I decided to paint as I listened to this masterpiece, letting the brush flow wherever the music directed me. The very first chords reminded me of an industrial factory, belching smoke as its workers furiously hammer out steel. My brush slashed at the canvas accompanying the fugue at the speed of light, followed by an ocean of tidal waves battering steep, granite cliffs. The last movement finishes with a steady, unyielding beat in the lower strings, strangely minor, and deep, reminding me of the aftermath of an Armageddon.
As rule, whenever I paint like this, everything fits on a single canvas.....this time I used five. As I painted, my dogs barked and danced and when I put the brushes down, I looked up and saw that paint had been spattered all over the dogs, the walls, ceiling, floor and into the adjoining room! It took well over four hours to clean up the mess, but the end result was worth it.
Anyone who wishes to see the visual results of these paintings is free to log into my website at [...]Click on the button for 'abstracts', then click on 'abstracts 4'. Scroll down to the bottom row and examine paintings nos. 803, 804, 805 (They are clearly marked 'Shostakovitch 4th') Then go to 'abstracts 5' and examine the first row, paintings nos. 806 and 807. Note the different key and feel of the last one compared to the first four. I then urge you to purchase this Ormandy CD on Amazon...you'll be ever so glad you did!
Note: this order includes two CDs. One is the 4th and the other is the 10th. Be sure BOTH CDs are included. When I received it the 4th had been omitted and I had to call Amazon to send me the 4th under separate cover. The 10th is pretty stuff, to be sure, but as beautiful as the 10th may be, it ain't no 4th!!