Customer Reviews

Shostakovich Symphonies and Concertos - An Owner's Manual: Unlocking the Masters Series

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

 

 

David Hurwitz, founder and editor of respected daily classical music magazine Classicstoday.com, presents Shostakovich Symphonies And Concertos: An Owner's Manual, an in-depth discussion of Shostakovich's grand musical creations. Offering much more than a technical analysis, Shostakovich Symphonies And Concertos also discusses at length what the music sounds like and how it works expressively. Featuring scrutiny of fifteen symphonies and six concertos in chronological order, Shostakovich Symphonies And Concertos provides a marvelous guided tour of the unfolding melodies as well as an overview of how Shostakovich's works fit into Western classical musical tradition. An accompanying full-length music CD contains a performance of Shostakovich's Fifth Symphony, which accurately showcases his style. Especially recommended for music students and classical music lovers everywhere.

I believe that as his work becomes better-known, Shostakovich will be universally regarded as the composer who in the post World War I era of the 20th century has contibuted than any other to the expansion of the standard classical music repertory. Hurwitz'z book is an excellent, jargon-free introduction to his 15 symphonies and 6 concertos. Written with the general reader, it has interesting insights on virtually all the works covered, even on those few symphonies, such as the 12th, which are usually dismissed as substandard hackwork. He is well aware of the already massive Shostakovich literature, including the controversial "Testimony" by Solomon Volkov, but he is not afraid to form his own opinions which may or may not be contrary to received knowledge. Heartily recommended to all classical music lovers.

Boy, do I ever hate being the ant at the picnic. But somebody has to say something. This is both useful and of little use simultaneously. That is, it is a well-written, conversational excursion through the repertoire that will be illuminating to many music-lovers. But at the same time it will teach them almost nothing.

Here is the problem: this book, like so many books on music written recently, takes the position that it would be the kiss of death to actually include a single musical example. To which many might say, yahoo! But if you resolutely avoid any use of musical notation, or even musical terms, in talking about music in a detailed fashion, then you find yourself having to say things like "and now the bippity-boop theme returns, this time on the flute." And I'm only slightly exaggerating. Imagine several pages about a work that uses a characteristic rhythm throughout in which the only way the author can refer to this rhythm is as 'The Rhythm'. Imagine if we have two themes and instead of describing one as being repeated eighth notes on D and the other as being rising fourths he has to refer to them as "the droney theme" and "the leapy theme". (These names are made up.) This is to reduce discussion of music to baby talk. And when the subject is large symphonic works, that seems particularly incongruous.

But I suspect that the author is not as much to blame as might be thought. He is after all, not starting a trend, but merely extending it. Apparently no-one, not even music-lovers, actually learns to read music any more. And also, apparently, if you want to actually, y'know, sell your book on music it must not contain any actual music.

But it's still baby-talk.

It took me a long time to 'warm up' to 20th Russian music. If you'd like to try it out, then read this book! Hurwitz's writing style is in-depth yet understandable even for people without a strong musical background.

I'm listening to the accompanying CD as I write this, and Shostakovich's 'Symphony No. 5' pretty much exemplifies his life. His struggles against the Communist Party and censorship, moments of joy and quiet elation, and just plain pondering...it's all here. Hurwitz takes you track by track, movement by movement, theme by theme. In Symphony No. 13, Shostakovich works off of poetry - in the fifth movement:
"And so all hail a career, when it's a career like Shakespeare's, or Pasteur's,
Newton's, or Tolstoy's - (Leo?) Leo!
Why was dirt thrown at them? Talent is talent, however it's called.
They're forgotten, the ones who were doing the cursing,
But we remember the ones that they cursed at." (p. 179).

Musical evaluation is a ultimately a personal experience. But David Hurwitz offers some thought-provoking and helpful insight into a commonly misunderstood composer.

I found this most interesting and easy to read. Hurwitz has whimsical style that makes it easy to be informed and entertained. His works should make good textbooks for music students of the current generation.

I have to agree with the reviewer who wrote "...[h]ere is the problem: this book, like so many books on music written recently, takes the position that it would be the kiss of death to actually include a single musical example. To which many might say, yahoo! But if you resolutely avoid any use of musical notation, or even musical terms, in talking about music in a detailed fashion, then you find yourself having to say things like "and now the bippity-boop theme returns, this time on the flute." ..." I barely read music (yes, I'm musically illerate), but a little notation to illustrate a point would be helpful - in all of his books. Additionally, I purchased this book because I've been perpelxed by the many descriptions of Shostakovitch's 9th symphony that describes its humor and sarcasm -- where and what are they? I was hoping the book would touch on this topic (since what Shostiakovich wrote was NOT what Stalin expected..); unfortuately, no discussion of humor or sarcasm. For this reader, not many secrets were unlocked.

Born in 1906 Shostakovich lived through the communist years in the Soviet Union. This book covers Shostakovich from his first symphony, completed when he was 19 through his next 14 symphonies and six concertos. It has relatively little in the way of biography, but instead is about his music.

Each major work is given a chapter of its own, and like the Owner's Manual of an automobile it describes the feelings generated by that work.

Mr. Hurwitz is perhaps the foremost writer working today in the field of classical music. He founded and is the executive editor of ClassicsToday.com a daily clasical music magazine, and is the chairman and founder of the Clkasical Internet Awards. He is the author of similar books on Wagner, Mozart, Mahler, Dvorak, and Haydn. The book includes an audio CD of Shostakovich's Fifth Symphony, easily his most famous.

This book offers analysis. It is an overview like a strategic war map of Europe during World War II. Some of the details will get lost as Mr. Hurwitz tries to describe in the most basic of terms what the music of Shostakovich's Symphonies and Concertos are to the musical novice. To be honest you have to have gotten at least a "C" in classical music appreciation and a class in Sonata Form would help. Fortunately I have had both and so I can make sense of Mr. Hurwitz writes.

One critic of this book feels that he is being talked down to. Well I feel just the opposite in grasping the ideas laid out in this book. All fifteen symphonies of Shostakovich and all six of his concertos are laid out for examination. Mr. Hurwitz comes to conclusion in this book for instance that the Shostakovich 4th symphony first movement which was thought to be nonsense just decades ago is an inverted Sonata Form movement. He also concludes in the book and I guess I am spoiling it by saying that in all twenty-one works Shostakovich never used the same patterns of music twice! Indeed this book makes you admire Shostakovich all the more if you don't already know him.

I should warn you that the book alone will not teach you about Shostakovich's music. But if you have his music and read what Hurwitz has written it makes a lot of sense especially to the novice or those with little education in music. This book might seem redundant to you if you already know Shostakovich's music and can analyze it for yourself. Personally it has clarified what I already have known and made me appreciate Shostakovich even more.

If you are collecting books about Shostakovich I would consider this one to be the third behind a good biography and the Hulme Catalog of his works.

Yes, it would be nice to have some music examples, but Dr. Hurwitz's book is, nevertheless, a splendid and reliable guide to all (but one! See below) the Shostakovich symphonies and concertos for those of us who are reasonably educated music lovers but not academically trained musicologists. In effect, this book is an inspiring and helpful course in "music appreciation" and those of us who are not musicologists will learn a lot about classical music in general from it, such as important concepts as "Sonata Form" and the like. And a big plus is the inclusion of a first-rate performance on CD of Shostakovich's Fifth, which Hurwitz leads us through in an introductory chapter (so: "Pay particular attention to" such-and-such a motive and *why*, and telling us where to find the important things we should notice by giving us the actual timing in the record where they appear. This is enormously helpful indeed.)

My one big exception, alluded to above: Dr. Hurwitz presents his readers with what I believe to be an extraordinarily eccentric (and wrong-headed) interpretation of the meaning of the Seventh ("Leningrad") Symphony, which simply doesn't tally with all the evidence (including Shostakovich's own words and the circumstances surrounding its writing) we have about it. But so what? Read other, more traditional commentators on the Fifth, then return to Dr. Hurwitz's otherwise splendid, reliable, and inspiring guide.