Customer Reviews

Shostakovich: Symphonies 1 & 3

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The review below repeats an earlier review for the same CD on another lael:

Melodiya, the state record company of the USSR, licensed its recordings on many different Western labels, along with its own exports. I know little about Moscow Studio except that its sound is good on Rozhdestvensky's Shostakovich recordings. It's worth finding the best-sounding version of this pairing of Sym. 1 and 3 that you can find. Taken from Rozhdestvensky's complete Shostakovich symphony cycle in the 80s, the sonics are exceptional considering the source: clear, vivid, and detailed. There's a bit of digital glare in loud climzes, but it isn't distrubing.

After an accomplished account of Sym. #1 that is fairly laid back at times but punchy in the climaxes, we get to the real star of the CD, the neglected Third Sym. Long a step-child compared to the most popular symphonies, the Third is made up of disjointed episodes that read like a catalog of Shostakovich's many idioms -- ballet, film score, socialist realism, brash modernism, etc. There are no famous or catchy themes, and most of the episodes last only a few minutes before a new one, often in a totally contrasting mode, appears. The people's chorus tacked on as a grandiose finale has offended Western critics with its hackneyed Soviet text.

Even so, Rozhdestvensky plays each episode for its own expressive worth, and therefore we savor brashness, sentimentality, glitzy romping, fervent patriotism, introverted melancholy -- the works. His Ministry of Culture orchestra from Moscow plays with more roughness and sharper edges than their counterparts in Leningrad, but for this kind of Machine Age avant-gardism, that seems perfect -- yoou feel closer to the premiere, before Shostakovich turned from suspicious bad boy to revered master. There are plenty of frissons left in the Third, and Rozhdestvensky relishes them all.