Customer Reviews

Shostakovich: Symphonies Nos. 6 & 12

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I love these recordings. The Sixth (originally coupled with the Eleventh) was one of the first CD's I ever bought, and it remains a favorite. Its unusual structure begins with a long, mournful slow movement, followed by a much shorter and faster middle section, ending with an even shorter, breathlessly-paced final movement. There are now many fine versions of this piece available, but Haitink's relative understatement works well with the somewhat extroverted nature of the music. The playing of the magnificent Concertgebouw Orchestra is, as usual, one of the highlights.

The Shostakovich Twelth Symphony seems to have many more detractors than fans - including the composer himself. No, it is probably not the finest of his fifteen symphonies. It is filled with bombast and his inspiration seems to be not as tightly focused (diplomatically speaking), compared to masterpieces like 5, 8 and 10. Never mind. There is still a great musical mind on display, plenty of dramatic moments to savor, and the orchestral playing by, in this instance, the London Philharmonic, is excellent.

Some find Haitink too self-effacing. I find that very quality an asset in this particular repertoire.

As a huge fan of Shostakovich, I got this cd merely to listen to a couple of symphonies that I had not heard, but they turned out to be among my favorites. The Sixth is highly regarded, but the Twelfth has gotten a lot of bad press. I don't understand why; I think it's a great piece, one of his most immediately appealing works. Both pieces are big and brooding as is characteristic of Shostakovich's works. Although I'm not a big fan of Haitink (I think his Ring cycle is boring), he produces grand orchestral sound from the Concertgebouw and exciting performances of both pieces.

Bernard Haitink brings real stature to these works, especially the sometimes maligned Twelfth Symphony. The playing of the Concertgebouw Orchestra is trenchant and, at times, cinematic. Instumental colors project with extremely satisfying vividness, no doubt made possible, in part, by the marvelous recording job of the London/Decca sound engineers. Conductor and orchestra are so convincing in their sonic, architectural and emotional presentation that, at this time, it is difficult for me to return to some of the others who have recorded these works, (though, anywhere in Shostakovich, I almost always make exceptions for Mravinsky, whom I consider to be the composer's most accurate and exciting interpreter despite sound quality that never compares favorably with what Decca offers.) Rarely have I encountered Haitink, in particular, sound more involved and intense in making music come to life. In other instances too in this series, the team of Haitink/Concertgebouw/London Philharmonic/Decca has delivered most generously. This linking of the Sixth and Twelfth Symphonies just might constitute the best introduction for those who are curious about this composer who speaks volumes.

I have never understood why Shostakovich's 12th doesn't get more credit. Sure, it's a big brassy heroic sounding piece, but sometimes that exactly what I want to hear. I often think if someone else had written it, it might have gone over better with the critics. If you want to introduce Shostakovich to your non-classical music aligned friends, look no further. In fact I would go so far to say there isn't really a week point in it as far as accessibility is concerned. Even it's somewhat brooding second movement has a certain subdued excitement to it. Shostakovich 6th is not catchy in the same way as the twelfth, but it tends to grow on you after listening to a few times. The orchestra on both these pieces is first grade and the sound quality is good. Truthfully this is one of my most played CDs.

Shostakovich's Symphony No. 12 in D Minor, Op. 112 (The Year 1917 - in Memory of Lenin) has not favored well with critics and apparently with music directors. It is rare to hear a performance at all, much less a fine one, which leads the unknowing public to believe the pundits who descry this work as 'movie music' and contradictory to Shostakovich's later professed repugnance with the Communist state: how could that composer have written a work honoring the Revolution of 1917?

Time changes perspectives and while the 12th Symphony is not the through-composed great work of his other symphonies, it still remains an important and very beautiful work. Written in four continuous movements, each movement represents stages in the Revolution: 1) Revolutionary Petrograd, 2) Razliv (Lenin's hideout north of St Petersburg), 3) Aurora (the ship that fired on the Winter Palace, reportedly the inception of the Revolution, and 4) The Dawn of Humanity. The scoring is clear and straightforward and the symphony is actually one of the more accessible of Shostakovich's 15 symphonies.

Bernard Haitink and the Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam give a powerful and honest and committed performance, one that will hopefully encourage further performances of this neglected work. Coupled with the 12th is a stunning performance of Shostakovich's much played and much loved 6th Symphony. Haitink brings great dignity and sonorous playing from the Concertgebouw and indeed this is one of the strongest recordings available of this symphony also. While many still regard Rostropovich's recordings of these works with the London Symphony Orchestra as the definitive ones, those performances are now available only in the boxed set of all of the Shostakovich symphonies. That is superb collection, but for those interested in acquainting with the 12th, this recording is a fine alternative. Grady Harp, August 05

Shostakovich is the most recent, last great symphonic composer, after Mahler, and his body of work represents a cycle as great and profound as those of Beethoven, Bruckner and Mahler. There are only a handful of sets of his complete symphonies, and this is one of the very best. Haitink is a fine conductor working with two excellent orchestras, and his understanding of the music, the execution and especially the power really grows through the cycle.

Shostakovich wrote some minor, politically 'motivated' symphonies, and these are as capably done as anyone. His landmark works, and they are great, are the 1st, 4th, 5th, 8th - 10th, 11th and 13th - 15th. These last three, under Haitink, are as good as you will hear. While his 1st and 4th are not more than solid, the other great works are exceptionably conveyed here. Absolutely four stars for the music, and at this current astonishing download price of $11.98, easily a fifth for unbeatable value. I already have the boxed set, and I'm tempted to download them again anyway!

This is probably my favorite recording in Haitnik's Shostakovich cycle. While these are not Shostakovich's "best" symphonies, they are still first-rate works that demonstrate Shostakovich's fervent commitment to musical and emotional truth, even in what some might consider the propagandistic 12th symphony. The recording is amazing and Haitnik's interpretation is the best in my book for both works. I couldn't imagine anyone else making anything of the 12th symphony, and his 6th is more poised and confident than anyone else's performance (though adimittedly, I haven't heard every recorded performance--but most).

My favorite is clearly the magnificent 6th symphony, a work that betrays some fondness for Prokofiev's symphonic idiom without being at all derivative. The dark, expansive opening movement is one of Shostakovich's greatest symphonic frescoes: a haunting melody arches overhead with an almost Sibelian sweep, though its emotional intensity is more akin to Mahler or even Tchaikovsky. What better way to conclude the symphony than with two irreverent, diabolic scherzos, very similar to the scherzo of Prokofiev's 5th symphony, but less four-square. In short, it's a masterpiece of 20th century symphonic writing, resisting every cliche and convention of the period, yet still capturing his moment in time and his unique musical thumbprint.

The 12th is less a symphony than a suite from one of his memorable and dramatic movie scores. Not quite on the level of Hamlet or King Lear, but somewhere between those works and Five Days, Five Nights. The opening movement is trademark Shostakovich, with rushing strings and piercing woodwings. A slow, contemplative movement follows (deeper than his critics would suggest), followed by a vicious "scherzo" full of orchestral artillery. And while the finale can sound a bit ridiculous in other hands, here it sounds, if not quite triumphant, then at least a fitting conclusion to a tuneful, propulsive work. While the 11th symphony captures the sense of a national epic more convincingly, the 12th is a lot of fun--and no less cogently argued.

I can recommend every release in Haitnik's series, but this one could be easily overlooked. Don't make that mistake. Or do, but don't say I didn't warn you.

Of all Shostakovich's symphonies the 12th has been the one worst received by the Western critics. Much of this may (ironically) be due to the perceived lack of irony in the work, which is a relatively straightforward piece of romanticism. Maybe one is no longer allowed to be romantic in the modern world. Lenin (as opposed to Stalin) was always a great hero to Shostakovich. He had been one of the few present (as a 10 year old boy) at Lenin's return to Russia at the Finland Station and had also seen at first hand the cruelties of the old Tsarist regime when he witnessed the murder of a child much the same age as himself by a Cossack soldier shortly after this event.
In this work clearly Shostakovich is looking back at those events. No doubt there is idealism here but then that was the mood of Russia in 1917. Would it be "realistic" to depict it otherwise? And besides if we are to complain of idealism then we will have to dismiss a good deal of Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, Brahms, Vaughan Williams etc.
I have to be honest and say I enjoyed this performance thoroughly. It's the sort of music that wants to make you want to stand up and cheer and if you can't get on your feet after a piece of music and shout "bravo" then maybe you should stick to disco. Haitink doesn't complain about lack of irony here, he just gets on with the job and portrays this work for what it is, a thoroughly positive experience. It reminded me a hell of a lot of Tchaikovsky No.4 , which is not a work noted for its irony either.
Should we be put off by Shostakovich's own later dismissive statements about this work? I don't think so. Psychologically Shostakovich was a very complex individual. Throughout his life he fought a long battle between the introspective, gloomy, personal aspects of his music and the more public, optimistic, positive forms it had to observe - Floristan and Eusebius. It is very notable though, how often he undertook public commissions for film music for example. Although he may have resented to some extent the public stance he was forced to take on occasion he recognized this as a genuine necessity, if art is not to become merely a form of narcissism, the predominant form it takes nowadays in the absence of any proper political focus and it is particularly significant that he should have chosen to make this particular statement not under the Stalin dictatorship but under the relatively freer conditions that followed. How, we might perhaps wonder, can it be that (relative) freedom results in greater orthodoxy? It would, nevertheless, be a great error and insult to say that this was music "made to order". It was clearly music that came from the heart, though DSCH himself might later have cursed this very fact.
The 6th symphony is perhaps a strange companion for the 12th but the contrast is nevertheless welcome. In this work, perhaps more than most, Shostakovich seems to have caught himself between two moods, forced to abandon the complex, pessimistic intensely personal fourth in favor of the more orthodox of fifth, while at the same time deeply pessimistic about the rise of Nazism, the scene was set for some jarring musical conflicts.
Oddly I find the 6th less satisfactory as music, despite its brilliant orchestration, than the 12th, which at the very least has a strong sense of its own form. It is interesting to compare the Shostakovich 6 with Vaughan Williams' 5th symphony , which are virtually contemporaneous. Both have long, slow opening movements, but while RVW's has a backbone of deep, innate confidence and self-belief, DSCH's has an empty, uncertain feel. Haitink's Tempo is extremely slow, one of the slowest tempi I have heard on a record, and this combined with the series of long trills, as in Beethoven's Op.111 Piano Sonata creates a strange almost stationary effect.
If Shostakovich 6's first movement is Mahlerian, the 2nd and the 3rd are pure Prokofiev. The second starts light and brilliant, if somewhat distant, gradually becomes more intense and threatening before erupting into a moment of violent conflict then dissolves again without any true sense of resolution. In the 3rd movement the brilliant surface is once more maintained, whilst again not creating any sense of certainty. Shostakovich made some curious experiments with symphonic form. At the conclusion there is some heavy irony in the shape of some pompous brass contributions, nevertheless I feel the three movements alone here are not sufficient, and that a fourth was needed, as the Vaughan Williams inevitably has, and that we are left merely worrying about what may be to come. Perhaps this was DSCH's intention.
Haitink's great virtue as a conductor in these performances is that he self-effacing. He gets the orchestra to play the music as it is written and leaves us to do the interpreting, which is the way it should be. I recommend this and indeed all of his performances of Shostakovich's music.

I just want to add that although amazon gives reviews for the 6th and 12th symphonies, this is actually all the symphonies (1rst - 14th), plus two song cycles. 11 Cd's for the price of one is certainly fair.

I don't know whehter to admire so many Amazon reviewers for being good Samaritans about the much-maligned Shostakovich Twelfth, or to wonder if they were paid off by the last surviving Communist cell in America. The work is hollow, bombastic, false, and aimless. Critics are a fickle breed, but every single one can't be wrong.

I love the Sixth Sym., however, and cannot get out my head the tragic reading of the first movement as delivered by Mravinsky. Haitink is relatively careful in this great arch of a Largo, finding its intensity only at odd moments. He treads too nimbly in the Scherzo, which needs more edge and bite. The finale is splendidly played by the Concergebouw winds in particular, and although Haitink's tempo isn't the swirling Presto that the composer asks for, even with a bit of a lumber in its gait the movement is a success.

As to the details of the Twelfth, the reviewer who declares this to be the first great performance has overlooked the searing, intense Mravinsky version that has long set the standard. But Decca's sonics are much better, and the Concertgebouw plays with more smoothness and richness than the Leningrad Phil. To his credit, Haiitnk's performance is serious and committed. I doubt that perspectives will ever change toward this work--it seems like empty loyal-Soviet-artist posturing from beginning to end.

Of course, to convincingly glorify Lenin and the Bolshevik Revolution at this late date would take the reincarnation of Beethoven. The fact that we must endure this banality for almost 45 min. makes dentistry seem like a lark in spring.