Customer Reviews

Shostakovich: Symphonies Nos. 1 & 14

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Fortunate we are to have several excellent choices in recordings of this brilliant Shostakovich Symphony No. 14. Based on poems of death by Apollinaire, Lorca, Kuchelbecker, and Rilke and scored for large strings and percussion only orchestra the piece demands almost as much from the listener as it does form the performing forces. At a recent performance in Los Angeles, brilliant though it was in every way, many of the audience members walked out, unable to tolerate the dark work.

Here Simon Rattle conducts the Berlin Philharmonic strings with depth and fluid passion and gathers as much color as possible form the writing. The absolutely first rate singers are Karita Mattila and Thomas Quasthoff, and the mere mention of their names should offer sufficient reassurance that the musicianship, color of voice, and communication of these difficult texts is sufficient to guarantee a brilliant performance. But these two singers, and especially Quasthoff, delve so deeply into the meaning of the poems, finding all the subtleties of the writing that the listener is frozen in time. It is a brilliant recording.

The jaunty First Symphony of Shostakovich is an added CD to the set, and a very welcome one at that. Often dismissed as 'youthful' and therefore not worth including in the major works of Shostakovich, this work has so many suggestions of the places the composer would so powerfully go in his tumultuous career. Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic give a fine reading, making us appreciated the work all the more. Highly recommended. Grady Harp, August 06

This new EMI recording is so splendid musically and so spellbinding in its sonics that it sets a new standard. The death-soaked Shostakovich Fourteenth is a tough listen. Its Russian blackness has been brightened here in several ways. Instead of a Slavic bass we have Quasthoff's refined German baritone. This removes some of the grim visceral power in the male songs, but Shostakovich is suicidally bleak in many of these songs, and frankly, getting a little relief is welcome. Karita Mattila's soprano is ripe enough to sound almost Slavic, but with a blessed lack of Slavic wobble and shrill edginess.

The second big change is the virtuosity of the Berlin Phil., which offers the ear sensual pleasure amid all the gloom. The strings are sweet, supple, and agile. The percusison is razor-sharp and full of color as recorded live by EMI's engineers. I can see why the reviewer below doesn't think this performance is Russian enough; it just happens that I prefer it less biting and brutal (my old favorite being the Haitink recording on Decca with Fischer-Dieskau and Julia Varady, who leaven the text even more by singing the eleven poems in their several original languages instead of Russian).

EMI has sweetened the mix by adding Rattle's live reading of the popular First Sym. on a bonus disc. The First is a jaunty student work, though it has itws own darker shadings. The listener gets a chance to contrast the old and young Shostakovich; one is more likely to flee to the First to sweep the gloom of the Fourteenth out of the house. Actually, Ratle's performance is a touch seroius and carefully played; it's not the romp that Haitink's was. Gergiev and Dohnanyi, both of whom I heard live in this piece, take the same more sober view. The outstanding thing here is the gorgeous, detailed sound and as ever, the playing of the Berlin Phil.

Both Shostakovich's last two symphonies are obsessed with death. And both are profoundly Russian in their approach to their subject matter. They share a deep darkness at their hearts to which Russians seem to have a unique key. And both are leavened by that biting sardonic Russian humour which, in Shostakovich's hands, always seems equally black.

No.14 is perhaps the darker of the two, aided by the monochrome colouring of its strings-only orchestra and abetted by the flashes of colour and texture from the large percussion group that complements it. Despite taking its texts from a broad range of European poets, it is this profound Russian blackness that is the all-pervading characteristic of the piece. De profundis (the title of the first poem) indeed.

And it is perhaps such quintessential Russianness that this disc lacks. Wonderful singers, wonderful orchestra, and a wonderful conductor ultimately cannot substitute for that echt Russian voice. The singers, especially Mattila, certainly have their moments of magical singing - her lilies in the Suicide and, for that matter, Quastoff's O Delvig, Delvig are both intense and moving. But not precisely in the right way. Shostakovich himself tried to provide a way out by authorising the singing of the texts in the poems' original languages (as used by Mr. and Mrs. Fischer-Dieskau on Decca). But it's a stop-gap - no substitute for the real thing. For that you have to turn to real Russians singing in real Russian such as Vishnevskaya and Rezhetin for Rostropovich.

Much the same comments apply to the orchestral playing and conducting, as well. There is certainly the full range of string colour and devices here - rich bass and cello sonorities, full violin tone, col legno and sul ponticello effects, pizzicati that are full and rich or spookily glassy as the score demands - all wonderfully played by the Berlin Philharmonic. But once again, you don't feel this music is in their or their conductor's bones. Rattle too often is caught up by the moment, worrying at a phrase or seeking out deeper truths in the inner voices. But it is all rather counterproductive. The flow and symphonic thrust of the whole piece seems to elude him and it tends to remain just a song-cycle. Even the moving reprise of the opening material much later passes for relatively little.

For that real Russian darkness and intensity, I would turn to Rostropovich with his wife and Mark Rezhetin. Or, for a fascinating alternative, the same singers join Benjamin Britten - the dedicatee of the symphony - in the first performance of the piece outside Russia on a BBC Legends disc. Perhaps not totally echt, but Britten was never less than elucidating when conducting other composers' music as well as his own.

Symphony No.1 on a separate disc fares better. The teeming plethora of ideas and vivid orchestral imagination of the 19-year old composer get the treatment from Rattle and his Berliners. Even here, though, there are times when the sheer variety of the ideas don't always gel together. Nevertheless an exciting performance of a symphony that was always much more cosmopolitan in outlook than its successor from late in Shostakovich's life.

We call music powerful that touches us deeply. Shostakovich's Fourteenth Symphony (actually a song cycle), in its eleven movements on the theme of death, has power to affect one who listens responsively to the synergy of words and music. Be sure that this is an important work. Shostakovich himself considered it a landmark among his compositions. In a letter to his close friend, literary and drama critic Isaak Glikman, he stated, "Everything I have written until now over these long years has merely served as a preparation for this work." (Cited by Elizabeth Wilson in her admirable book Shostakovich: A Life Remembered (Second Edition) - see my review.)

During a time in hospital in 1969, Shostakovich read extensively and made a disparate selection of poems on death, its relentless power, inflicted in war or by suicide, its guises (a prisoner without hope), or those who perpetrate it (Sultan of Constantinople, vilified as "mad butcher of Podolia"), even the futility of "love which is cut down by death." Shostakovich meets a great deal of poetic imagination with an equally imaginative score. Together, words and music become events of the imagination that strike out graphically at the listener. Many among the Russian intelligentsia, including Alexander Solzhenitsyn, criticized the work for its pessimism. Rainer Maria Rilke's "Death is all-powerful" in the Finale caused particular consternation. The composition offered no religious consolation, no light. Shostakovich, who was not religious, had a different viewpoint. Since, as he believed, there was no future beyond the grave, he protested against death and affirmed life: one had to appreciate life all the more and live fruitfully. He sought redemption and wanted to be remembered in the music he left behind him. Mstislav Rostropovich has related that Shostakovich would ask him, "Which composers do you think will remain in history after their death?" (Wilson)

Whether one likes it or is disturbed by it, this is a masterpiece that can't be ignored. Shostakovich scored it for a relatively small orchestra of strings and percussion only, with two singers, a soprano and a bass. Unless one knows Russian, it is unthinkable to listen without a translation of the poems. The liner has the Russian (transliterated) and English versions in columns next to each other, making it easy to follow the clear articulation of the singers and quickly read the translation, all the while marveling at the way Shostakovich had wedded music to text. The title of Lorca's opening poem, De Profundis (Out of the depths), a reference to the first words of Psalm 130, is a dark cry of anguish that pervades the whole symphony, that not even the vivid orchestration of the following movement (Malagueña), the drama of the third (The Lorelei) or the slashing music of the eighth (The Zaporozhian Cossacks' Answer to the Sultan of Constantinople) can hide. From the melancholic introduction to the last words of the poem, the strings never rise above the mournful, hushed singing tone of the bass, a dignified protest against the carnage of the Spanish Civil War. In the third movement, the most "operatic" of the eleven, the galloping escorts of the sorceress Lorelei are realistically portrayed by wood block. She is intent on killing herself and bell tolls announce the impending end. She does not heed the escorts' cries to get back, as she ascends the high rock, of which she carries the same name, to hurl herself into the Rhine, "seeing reflected in the smooth river / her Rhine-blue eyes and her sunlit curls." Movement 4 (The Suicide) first has sad, then terrifying ostinato, then shrieking strings represent the ghastly image of three lilies sprouting out of the suicide's wound, heart and mouth; bell tolls add a note of finality to the scene. In movement 5 (On Watch), not only is the soldier watching in the trenches but Death is watching to claim his life before nightfall. To suit the subject, what appears to be jaunty music at the start turns out to be macabre. The prisoner in solitary confinement in movement 7 has no prospects. After his words, "[H]ere I am dead to everyone," the singing stops, and there follows an interlude in which quiet, slow-tempo pizzicato strings take over, perhaps signifying void or hopelessness. The effect is not unlike a scene in some movies when amid total silence we hear a wall clock's relentless tick-tock. The prisoner then resumes singing and together with the strings builds up to the anguished cry, "Take the crown of thorns from my head / lest it pierce my brain." The music is so varied and in many ways unique that I can only suggest that listeners listen many times and explore this symphony-song cycle individually.

In fact, Shostakovich here is so good it seems purposeless to argue which recording of the Fourteenth is the best. Sir Simon Rattle and the Berliners need no recommendation; they have delivered many fine performances and this is one of them. Celebrated soprano Karita Mattila and bass Thomas Quasthoff are appropriately expressive in tandem with the words and music -- somber, animated, soft, dramatic, pleading, despairing ... They share movements 3 and 6, singing separate lines, but perform a true duet in the brief Finale -- and what a dramatic, highly intense climax they bring to the whole work! The excellent recorded sound of the live performance is icing on the cake.

I don't have much to say about the First Symphony (CD 2), good as it is, because the Fourteenth was the reason I bought the set and is my main interest here. I have another (EMI Classics) version of the BPO performing the First, but with Mariss Jansons conducting, that I like as much. Shostakovich composed the symphony as his graduation piece from the Petrograd (Leningrad) Conservatoire when he was only 19. It was an amazing accomplishment from one so young. The piece caught on quickly not only in the Soviet Union at that time, but also in the West. It remains deservedly popular.

The playing and conducting on this record is simply phenomenal, exactley what one would hope for from an orchestra of this caliber. but what stunned me the most was the quality of the recording!

the sound of this record, (through high quality headphones, studio style), was incredibly rich and deep, yet everything came across clearly.

the record on the whole was simply excellant, and i would recommend it to anyone looking for either of these symphonys, especially the first.