Customer Reviews

Shostakovich: Symphony No. 13- Babi Yar

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Beginning and ending with recitations by Yevgeny Yevtushenko, this CD is a powerful, emotional experience. Shostakovich's Symphony # 13, written after Stalin's death, with hopes of a better future and mourning the past, is a musical monument to the horrific mass execution at Babi Yar, and an expression against the anti-Semitism that continued in the U.S.S.R.
After much controversy over his poem, "Babi Yar", Yevtushenko was forced to change some central lines in it in order for the composition to be performed. All but ignored in its 1962 Moscow premiere, this magnificent symphony has now earned it's rightful place as one of Shostakovich's best pieces.

The five movements incorporate four additional Yevtushenko poems:
First movement: "Babi Yar", is a massive, adagio, with blazing trumpets and heavy drum beats. Second movement: "Humor", is a sprightly and playfull allegretto. Third movement: "In the Store", a beautiful, sad adagio, with a marvelous ending full of tension that segues into the fouth movement, "Fears", which is a largo of intense drama. The final allegretto, "Career", has wonderful, melodic passages, and the end is peaceful, with the last notes a barely audible pianissimo.
Track # 7 is Yevtushenko reciting "The Loss"; it was the first public hearing of this poem, and he reads it in English.

Bass Sergei Leiferkus, along with the Men of the New York Choral Artists, are outstanding, and Kurt Masur leads the New York Philharmonic in a magnificent performance.
Recorded live at Avery Fisher Hall in 1993, the sound is excellent, and total time 67:15. The insert booklet has extensive liner notes, and complete text of the poems in English, transliterated Russian, German and French.

This is an emotionally stirring, riveting performance of Shostakovich's 13th Symphony. One which Teldec's engineers have splendidly captured live at Lincoln Center's Avery Fisher Hall. It begins promisingly enough with Russian poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko's recitation of the prologue to his poem "Babi Yar", which is soon followed by the opening notes of Shostakovich's symphonic tribute to Yevtushenko's poem. Masur leads the New York Philharmonic in one of their finest performances ever recorded; most noteworthy are the vibrant, warm tones produced by the string, wind and brass sections.

This recording is the first choice on my "desert island" list. The orchestra simply plays magnificantly. Only the NYP has the rich sound to express the gravity of the first movement. The flute playing at the start of the last movement is unearthly, offering such a relief to the heaviness of the previous four; I'll listen to the first 4 movements just to get to this one and be lifted beyond every day human experience.

Simply put, this may be the finest recording Masur and the Philharmonic made together. I don't think the orchestra has ever sounded finer than in this heart-rending music, which seems to be a photograph in sound of the horror that was a large part of the 2oth Century.

Beginning and ending with the voice of the poet -- in Russian and in English -- it is as special a performance as the premiere under Kondrashin.

Utterly symphonic in structure, Masur is objective, and the NYPO is very polished, gliding through the scherzo, with blazing trumpets led by Philip Smith. Indeed, the woodwinds sound particularily keen playing those wonderfully rhapsodic semetic quotations. My one gripe with the Kondrashin (the premiere performance on the Russian Disc label) is that the segway into the finale is way too fast, dissolving away carthartic effects. This problem is resolved with the Germainc Masur, and the finale is quite satistfying indeed. With Yevtushenko reciting, a literary bonus is added.

This is an excellent recording of a powerful work. The orchestra's sound is first rate, and the individual instruments shine throughout. The percussion at the beginning of III is very effective and does an excellent job of depicting the text. The choir sound is very good, but the soloist's voice could be a deeper sounding bass. Masur's soloist often performs as a bass-baritone and his voice has a slightly higher sound than other soloists. Yevtushenko's reading is also powerful. The chance to hear the poet read his poem "Babi Yar," coupled with this outstanding performance, equals a CD that is hard to turn down. I agree to also add Kondrashin's account of this work on Russian Disc to your library, if you can find it.

Babi Yar is the name of a site in Kiev, Ukraine, where the mass murder of Jews and other civilians by German Nazis and Ukrainian collaborators took place in 1941. From an era of tragedy and inhumanity, even this event stands out as nearly beyond belief. After the war, Yevgeny Yevtushenko composed a poem in honour of the fallen of Babi Yar, taking the ruling post-Stalinist government to task for the rising anti-Semitism and neglect of remembering the massacre and other attendant atrocities. Yevtushenko's poem was written in 1961; it would not be published in the Soviet Union until 1984.

Dmitri Shostakovich similarly had difficulties with the government of the Soviet Union, being officially suppressed in the 1930s and 1940s; although 'rehabilitated' by the 1960s, his participation in events such as the Babi Yar poem/music composition and performance made many believe he was nonetheless a secret dissident all of his life, working to change the system from within. Despite the official suppression of Yevtushenko's poem, and the forced revisions to it before it could be publically performed together with Shostakovich's Symphony No. 13 in B Flat minor, the censors did not contain the power of the music.

In fact, the symphony has sometimes been likened to more of a song-sequence than a proper symphony. It has five parts or movements:

I Adagio (Babi Yar)
II Allegretto (Humour)
III Adagio (In the Store)
IV Largo (Fears)
V Allegretto (Career)

The symphony derives its name from the first movement, the Babi Yar poem, with powerful instrumentation and an end in desolation. The remaining movements more explicitly look at reawakening anti-Semitism in the Soviet society in different ways. Throughout much of the piece there are heavy bass sections to make things deeper and darker.

The first movement begin with muted trumpets and horns, foreshadowing the experience to come. Tension builds slowly, progressing relentlessly with a shattering impact in the timpani. In the second section, Humour, there is almost frenetic activity between percussion and woodwind in a dance. The third movement includes lesser-used percussion (castanets, woodblock) mimmicks the kinds of noises one might have in a shop, such as the banging of cans in a shop. In the fourth movement, Fears (a poem Yevtushenko wrote especially for the symphony) opens with a drum roll, followd by a sinister solo brass - it has quite an impact of menace. The fifth movement begins with expressive woodwind, then an intermezzo played on pizzicato strings, followed by threatening brass, and ends with a powerful fugue, returning to the woodwind. Then there is a string, then celeste and bell, and in the end, silence.

This is a powerful performance, incorporating author Yevtushenko himself as the one reciting the poem at the start. Kurt Masur, better known for German Romantic music, nonetheless adds power and expression to this massive interpretation. This recording was made only a few years after Masur succeeded Mehta as principal conductor of the New York Philharmonic. Sergei Leiferkus as bass adds experience and force to the music as well.

This is a powerful composition, a moving performance, and an important intersection between art and history on many different levels.

Despite the fact that Massur is not one of the great ones
for the music of Shostakovich, he does a wonderful job with
this work. Leiferkus ranks among the very few modern basses
that can actually give a clean clear performance of this work
The New York Philharmonic as always does an outstanding work, and the the men's chorus of the New York Choral Artists, sounds like as if it is chorus of soloists. Beutiful performance, and the poems by Yevtuchenko are as profound as the symphony, no wonder why Shostakovich chose "Babi Yar" as basis of his 13th Symphony.

I believe Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra gave the American premiere of this work. I took their performance on an out-of-print RCA recording to be at least representative of Shostakovich's music, but now I realize just how limited a rendition that was. The same is true for the Haitink recording on Decca, one that was also once well regarded. Masur in this live recording captures so much more of the terror and tragedy of Yevgeny Yevtushenko's angry poem and Shostakovich's setting of it. Berstein's classic Fifth Symphony recording showed that the New York Phil was a great Shostakovich orchestra, but here, in Masur's performance of the Thirteenth Symphony, is even more evidence. The brass section rasps and blurts with the ferocity of Russian brass players--but on pitch, without all that gratuitous vibrato! And the string sound is big and potent as well, something that Ormandy got right, as I recall, but then he had the Philadelphia strings at his disposal. Here, from the strings of the New Phil, is playing of equal refinement and fire.

The male chorus and soloist Leiferkus are first-rate as well, Leiferkus' dark bass as fluid as if he were playing a wind instrument. Just as important, the recording handles everything beautifully, from the dark string tones to the ringing, raging brass to the often-scintillant percussion writing. This is a broad orchestral palette captured with faithfulness and power. In all, a great Shostakovich recording.

Dmitri Shostakovich's Thirteenth Symphony began as a cantata, growing from Yevgeny Yevtushenko's powerful poem Babi Yar (about the massacre of Jews outside of Kiev during the Second World War that the Soviet government had ignored) into a five movement work. The political controversy of Shostakovich's symphony is an interesting subject, particularly since Yevgeny Mravinsky (who had conducted just about all of the symphony premieres from the Fifth through the Twelveth) refused to take on the Thirteenth with its disapproving political message. Kiril Kondrashin took up the symphony and despite the first two basses pleading ill health and the pressure exerted from the Soviet government the Symphony was performed in December 1962 and had three performances. Subsequently Yevtushenko, under pressure from the government, altered Babi Yar to reflect the idea that more people than Jews where killed by the Nazi's requiring Shostakovich to make an alteration to his score.

The Thirteenth is a deeply felt work that still has a visceral impact more than forty years after it was written. To celebrate the Shostakovich Centennial the Thirteenth was performed at Ravinia in July 2006 to great acclaim. Filling in for the bass was a baritone, and while the performance was excellent, sung with great feeling for the text, lacking was the deep sonorous sounds of a bass. This is what I feel is also missing from this recording. Sergei Leiferkus is one of my favorite singers, who I have enjoyed in concert performances and from recordings, but lacking is the deep bass sound from singers like Vitaly Gromadsky (who performed at the premiere). I also found the first movement underpowered, as if the player were afraid of revealing the darkness of the music.

The outstanding performance of Babi Yar, for me, remains the recording of the second performance (recorded on December 20, 1962 and issued on Russian Disc) of the symphony by Kiril Kondrashin and the Moscow Philharmonic. The New York Philharmonic and Kurt Mazur simply cannot equal the power of this performance. This is a performance that is worth listening to for the excellence of Sergei Leiferkus and the chorus but is not my first choice in conveying the power of Babi Yar.