Customer Reviews

Shostakovich: Symphonies Nos. 9 & 12 [Hybrid SACD]

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

 

 

I really enjoyed the "Babi Yar" from these same forces. It is a whirlwind recording that competes well with Haitink's 1980's version. With bated breath, I ordered this and now don't regret it. The sonics are excellent. Percussion is present, winds are strong and the strings are excellent.
The 12th is outstanding. While not on par with the emotional depth of other symphonies, when played this well, it is a great experience. The only other versions that can compete are Haitink, Mravinsky, and Jarvi.
I am truly looking forward to the newest releases in this series.
Kudo's to the engineers, players, and Mark Wigglesworth.

This is an intriguing and thoroughly recommendable coupling of two very different Shostakovich symphonies.

The 9th is a small (but definitely not minor) masterpiece; the 12th is, despite Wigglesworth's earnest defence and reading of the piece, a piece of hackwork - the sort of thing Shostakovich had to resort to from time to time, when things got rough, to placate Stalin and his court philistines.

The 9th almost got Shostakovich in deep water; composed just after the war, and following the epic 8th and 9th symphonies, the apparat expected a like-minded, vast, noisy paean to victory in the Great Patriotic War. Instead, they received this short, lightweight Haydn-esque symphony. And, this being Shostakovich, the ambiguity and anguish behind the forced gaiety of the last movement is not difficult to discern. This was risky stuff; however, Shostakovich got away with it, and for the usual reason; the officials were too stupid to recognise the ambiguity, or simply found it more convenient to accept the shiny, happy facade and ignore the darker depths of the symphony.

Wigglesworth gets this double-meaning just right; this is a near perfect and superbly played performance- one of the very best 9ths I have heard- and I have heard quite a few, live and recorded. The grimace and tears behind the high jinks are not rammed down our throats, but they cannot be ignored. We will flog you until you dance...

And what are we to make of the 12th? I feel Shostakovich may have been telling us something by writing his weakest symphony for the 'successful' 1917 Revolution; by contrast, his take on the failed 1905 Little Revolution produced incomparably greater music. Go, figure. This shouldn't take too much brainpower, though...

As with this entire cycle, Wigglesworth's reading is direct, considered and thoughtful. However, it cannot hide the vacuum behind the bombast.

Like his previous Shostakovich recordings on BIS, the sound on both these symphonies is simply stunning; transparent, vivid and explosive. Well done, BIS engineers!

And now a surreal aside for you. Notice how the main motif of the first movement of the 12th, which returns at the end of the finale (at around 110 decibels) is based on the great Goodies rendition of 'I have a ferret sticking up my nose'. Yes, really. Nice post-modern irony, Dmitrij Dmitrievic ! And who would have thought that repeats of 'The Goodies' were available on State TV?

It is very fashionable to trash Shostakovich's 12th Symphony. True, it is no masterpiece but with repeat hearings I find it to be not that bad. OK, it does not have the depth of the 8th or 10th or the mystery of the 15th but it has good moments and I wish people would give it a chance. It has the composer's characteristic big statements, especially in the first and fourth movements. The 12th proves that Shostakovich's "worst" is much better than the best of other Russian composers such as Khachaturian or Myaskovsky. The performance here by Wigglesworth is astonishing and has BIS' amazing sonics. That percussion really leaps out. Try this CD. You will not be disappointed.

Shostakovich got into trouble when his Ninth Sym. appeared because it didn't live up to official expectation that he would write a large, heroic work in celebration of the defeat of the Nazis. The war had brought forth two massive, anguished symphonies, but peacetime released Shostakovich into a surge of witty, relaxed music largely free of bitter wit. Wigglesworth gives us a lean, alert reading that doesn't attempt to make more of the Ninth than it contains -- the buffoonery in the finale takes us right to the circus. As such, it's a refreshing change from Bernstein and Gergiev, whose excellent versions on DG and Philips err a bit on the side of inflation. When you throw in Bis's outstanding sonics and the pointed playing of the Netherlands Radio musicians, the result is very successful.

For me, the problem is the pairing. The Shostakovich Twelfth is hack work of the lowest order, a kowtow to official pressure for a display of Soviet loyalty. The back story wouldn't matter if the composer had tossed in better music, but the work is a tiresome trudge from beginning to end. The great Mravinsky managed a fiery recording that does its best to redeem the unredeemable. Nothing really helps. In the preceding symphony, the Eleventh, Shostakovich gained a success through cinematic scene painting and the evocation of sentimental folk tunes (not that I, for one, am won over). The Twelfth, subtitled "The Year 1917," takes on the Bolshevik Revolution, a bigger canvas with less appealing overtones. For once, Wigglesworth seems to lose his belief in the music, the result being a dutifully portentous reading. But then, I'd be the last one to admire these hollow gestures in praise of a historical tragedy.