Customer Reviews

Shostakovich: Symphonies Nos. 1 & 6 [Hybrid SACD]

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
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Pentatone is issuing a complete Shostakovich cycle with different conductors, and to the rising star Vladimir Jurowski falls two dissimilar works: Sym. #1 and #6. It's the second that poses an enormous challenge -- few conductors can convey the intensity and anguish of the opening Largo without leaning in too hard and missing the haunting, mournful delicacy of its final pages. Bernstein chooses to underline every gesture with black ink, but even he can't avoid sounding rhetorical when he means to be moving. Jurowski triumphs through an innate feeling for how to phrase very slow music at high voltage. Pentatone's sound, which puts you next to the conductor, conveys every strand of Shostakovich's orchetration (the only flaw being tubby bass, at least when the hybrid SACD is heard through ordinary two-channel stereo). Even listening through regular two-channel stereo, I found the x-ray effect mesmerizhing.

Much as I respect Scott Morison's opinions, I didn't find a single bar of Jurowski's Sixth to be lifeless -- he's not as extrovert and (let's face it) crude as traditional Soviet conductors like Svetlanov. In his measured way I detect a rich inner life and great musicality. The same olds true in the youthful Sym. #1, usually played as a romp but which Jurowski approaches with studied intensity. I can see why British critics rave about him and why at a young age he has been chosen to lead the London Phil. Be prepared for unusually intimate and personal performances here; they held me spellbound.

These are really fine performances. The 6th particularly so. My problem is with the recording, and it is not a technical issue, it is an issue with the orchestral layout, which (from left to right - from the audience's perspective) has first violins, then cellos/basses, then violas, then 2nd violins. In practical terms this places first violins, cellos and basses in the left channel, along with the first flute (importantly), so for 80% of the time this recordng sounds super left-channel biased. The problem is amplified by the fact that (along with 98% of all recordings) the violas - in the right channel - are underbalanced. It will probably not be an issue for 80% of people, so if you are one of those don't hesitate, but for me - and anyone else to whom this makes any sense - it is a real problem. Some conductors like the first violins and the cellos together (and it does have intonation advantages, particularly for less experienced players), but at this level that should not be an issue, and the downside is the "top" line and the bass line are always in the same channel. It sucks. Other than that, the playing is excellent and the recording is nice (I am referring to the 5.0 SACD multichannel mix) Its just a pity the orchestra is configured incorrectly - in my view!

I have been increasingly an admirer of the conducting of Vladimir Jurowski (who is, as most know, the son of veteran conductor Mikhail Jurowski, himself a Shostakovian of note) and fully expected to like this recording. But to some extent any positive response is tempered by what I perceive as an emotional reticence on the part of the conductor to let this music speak fully. This is no fault of the Russian National Orchestra, surely one of the world's finest. It could to some extent be a function of the CD's recorded sound which, although rich, lush and lifelike, tends to have a bass-laden autumnal glow around it that cuts into the music's immediacy. (I did not listen to the SACD layer. My views are based on listening to the plain vanilla CD layer only. It is possible that the SACD layer might reveal things I couldn't hear.)

I guess I could sum up my complaints in one sentence: These performances are too civilized, too restrained, too polite. I think I know why Jurowski got this effect -- he was going for suppressed, rather than extrovert, anguish in those sections that contain that emotion. And to some extent he obtains it. But where are the rough and tumble moments, the raw emotions that should come rushing to the surface? Listen to the Allegro of the Sixth Symphony. It is all silken bustling, but it is also lifeless, even in those passages that have the urgent brass interjections. Listen to those wind portamenti; they are so perfectly played that one doesn't get the sense of emotional stress that surely Shostakovich intended. Instead, one admires the player's ability to play them smoothly. As for the slow movements, there is too little life in them. They trudge, not because of angst but because they have no inner rhythmic tension.

The recorded sound is partly to blame. The dynamic range is extremely wide and when one cranks up one's volume to hear the soft passages, the loud passages become almost unbearably so. And no matter what volume one uses, there is still that fuzzy nimbus around the sound so that there is little linearity, little cut-glass clarity.

Scott Morrison