Customer Reviews

SHOSTAKOVICH: Fall of Berlin (The) / The Unforgettable Year 1919 Suite

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On December, 2002, I was in Berlin and I met this CD, but I decided to buy it another day... big mistake!! I never found it in Europe, fortunately I bought in amazon.com. Dont forget to order it now!

About this CD, everything is good. The record was made in 2000, in Moscow, recreating the original Mosfilm sound and atmosphere. Good performance that makes you feel happy or worried. The soundtrack was composed by Shostakovich in 1949 orginally for this movie, as Khachaturian did it for Battle of Stalingrad picture -also available by Adriano conducting the Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra, Marco Polo, 1993- and in the same era pro-Stalin-post-Great-Patriotic-War Shostakovich composed the Stalind-prized Song of the Forest -available by Termikanov conducting St. Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra, RCA Victor, 1998-.
The greatness of the composition obviously enhance the peaceful and cheerful of the USSR during the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact -brightful orchestration- the threat of Nazi regime -dark music atmospheres-, the well known struggle for the Reichstag -the epic tone developed as best by Shostakovich- and the grand-finalle by the -hipotetic- arrival of Stalin into Berlin Airport -just superb-.
The best of the russian choral tradition is adopted by the composer -again, Song of Forest as reference- in three delightful episodes .
In addition to The Fall of Berlin, you may enjoy a good performance of the complete Suite "The Unforgettable Year 1919".

This is not only a good sound track, its a great concert music of XXth century, and if you like Shostakovich or the epic genre music, you will love this CD.

the rather dull engineering...this disc is worth having for its other merits. Given the time this music was composed, I'm surprised at its quality. Certainly worth having.

This recording is made up of two film scores, one from 1949 and the other from 1951. Both films were made to glorify Stalin, and while I have only seen clips from The Fall of Berlin, if what I saw is typical the films are loaded with false heroics on Stalin's part. That Soviet filmmakers would have such a pro-Stalin slant under the dictator's brutal regime is not surprising. The real question, then, is what creative or musical approach would a composer already censured by Soviet authorities take in writing these scores. The answer, at least to this listener, is that Shostakovich took a very "safe" approach, writing music that is brazenly patriotic and "stirring". Unfortunately, the music is also trite, maudlin, and, in short, way below what we are accustomed to hearing from Shostakovich. To give an example, one selection from The Unforgettable Year features piano and orchestra, and it sounds like Tchaikovsky as imitated by a college music major. I will allow that Shostakovich shows a pretty clever sense of humor if sounding like an untalented student was his intent.
If one can accept the criticism claiming these scores are really bad, dull, and other negatives, then a possible question is, did the composer make the music bad on purpose? I think he might have. Others with more research and/or knowledge are welcome to correct me, but I do think the current thinking that some of Shostakovich's music is "encoded" with anti-Stalin undercurrents supports my contention.
Performances are adequate, as is recording quality, but those hoping these scores would come close to the quality of the composer's music for Hamlet are warned to expect much less.