Customer Reviews

Shostakovich: Symphony No.8

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My handle is Dmitri as in Dmitri Shostakovich. I have over 1,000 Shostakovich CDs alone. This is my first Amazon buyer review for a Shostakovich work.

The 8th symphony: Composed in 1943 at the height of World War 2 with the Russians fighting the Nazis (Yes the Russians were our allies!). The symphony depicts emotionally and literally that war in music. In the scherzos you can actually depict shelling, and visualize troop movement and tanks. The other movements are about feelings. The first movement for the lack of a better term is war...right in the middle of conflict emotionally. The last movement is resignation. An anticlimatic symphony in the end, but like perhaps no other piece of music a lesson in history. Rostropovich the famous cellist and friend of Shostakovich called it his masterpiece.

The performance: Previn maximizes the drama in the outer movements. Many conductors can do this with various success: Mravinsky, Haitink,and Jarvi. But only Previn takes the scherzos to the most maddening, rip snorting, fast paces. This is what distinguishes this performance and sets it apart from others. For people with a stop watch and the ability to look at the timings of the 2nd and 3rd movements see just how many get faster than under 6 minutes. Only three to my recollection: Haitink, Jarvi, and Previn. Of these Previn is the most riveting. I bought this at full price. It is indeed now a bargain on the EMI Encore label.

This was the recording (on LP) which introduced me to this most powerful of twentieth century symphonies; I've been intrigued and enamored of the Shostakovich Eighth ever since and have collected multiple recordings. Now, it's finally available again on CD (used copies of previous CD incarnations were astronomically priced) in EMI's budget-priced Encore series and sounds fantastic! It hasn't dimmed one iota in its persuasiveness and impact.

The recording dates from 1973 and I believe was the first stereo recording of the Shostakovich Eighth available commercially in the West.

I like David Bryson's description of the unrelenting grimness of the Shostakovich 8th so much that it's worth quoting a sample: The symphony "rouses itself from the anguish of the first movement to bitterness and a touch of defiance in the next two, sinks back into a near-catatonic stillness in the fourth and attains some kind of resigned peace in the final section." Of all the readings I've heard, Previn's first one from 1973 (he later redid the work for DG with the same LSO) was the premiere recording of the Eighth in stereo and is probably the most mournful. It's notably slow in the first and last movement -- the remake is slower still by a minute in each case -- but there's no rhetoric. ONe feels that the conductor is fully in sympathy with the composer's tragic lament.

Generally one would reflexively bypass Previn for the genuine Russian article in this music, but as it happens, Gergiev's 8th on Philips is unexpectedly weak, and Rostropovich's live account with the LSO on the orchestra's house label is coarse and decidedly rhetorical. So Previn emerges as one of the best recordings. I haven't compared his two versions side by side, but this earlier one is vividly recorded and blunt in its emotional impact - it feels rawer and more strident, which is good. The playing of the LSO is committed and intense. Perhaps the biting inner movements could be more corrosive, but that's a small quibble. In the end, no one will equal Mravinsky's shattering accounts on Philips and especially BBC Legends, but Previn throws us into the searing cauldron, and nothing more can be asked.

While the 15 Shostakovich Symphonies are of variable quality, it is the despairing Eighth and Tenth that are generally regarded as the supreme works of the cycle. The 1973 Previn/LSO version is a superb performance which unerringly conveys the dark and often desolate atmosphere of the work. Given the fact that this symphony was completed in 1943, it comes as no surprize that its conclusion is gloom laden and unconsolatory. It is only Yevgeny Mravinsky, the conductor who premiered the symphony, who equals Previn in conveying the essence of this composition on disc.

This bargain EMI reissue has the immense advantage of being supremely well recorded. The sound has wide ranging dynamics, is satisfyingly natural and is expertly balanced. The third movement, with its dramatic percussive effects, has long been a favorite for demonstrating the capabilities of high end sound systems. An obligatory purchase for Shostakovich enthusiasts.

This Shostakovich symphony in C minor is from 1943. The Eighth is very strong and somber. A strong performance by André Previn and the London Symphony Orchestra make this one of my favorite 20th century symphonies.

Recorded in 1973 and considered pretty hot stuff back then, this performance was finally being released on CD just in time to compete head-to-head with a rerecording by the same orchestra and conductor on DG. Although this performance sounds just a little too smooth for my taste, the refinement of the playing is undeniable, and although the recorded sound is a bit dry and spare on the bottom end, the overall sound quality is admirable. At midprice, this is a highly recommendable recording, but for a few bucks more, Haitink and Ashkenazy, both on London, feature excellent performances in slightly better sound, and the Ashkenazy disk features a couple of short but enjoyable filler pieces as a bonus.

I just listened to this, and my only reaction is Wow. No wonder this almost got Shostakovich sent to the gulags. Stalin's reaction to this symphony was, "Why such a depressing symphony in 1944, when we're on our way to victory?" (Especially after Stalin had hailed the "victorious" movements in the 7th symphony of 1942, when it looked like the USSR was going to get creamed!) What Shostakovich knew, by 1944, was that most of the "victorious" soldiers who had come back from fighting in Poland/Germany/Austria/Hungary--and even from the POW camps in those countries--were being taken off the troop trains and sent straight to the gulags. Some weren't even taken off the trains: Their troop trains went straight to the gulags without stopping. Why? Because they had seen eastern Germany, Poland, Austria, Hungary, and knew that the Communists had been lying to them all along about what a great life they had in the USSR, and how horrible things were in the West. (Remember: Eastern Germany etc. were not Communist yet, in 1944, and so were quite prosperous compared with the USSR.) For example: The Russian soldiers in the German POW camps were the only ones who never got their packages from home; so they knew exactly what awaited them when they got back to the USSR. They committed suicide in droves.

This is just one example of the horrors Shostakovich was aware of, and which he had to build into a symphony, yet still somehow stay out of the gulags himself.

So I was very moved, especially by the later movements, after Shostakovich has stopped portraying the war, and started portraying the emptiness of victory, the utter wasteland of victory in the USSR. (Remember: Huge portions of the Soviet army had offered to switch and fight for Hitler, and Hitler had not accepted. Even so, some parts of the Soviet army fought for Germany anyway. The German army was hailed in western Russia, and especially in The Ukraine--which Stalin had tried to starve out of existence in the 30s--in much the same way as the liberating Allied army was hailed throughout France: as deliverers. That's how deeply hatred for the Soviet regime was ingrained, how deep their desperation was.) Shostakovich came closer to being sent to the gulags for this symphony than he ever did for anything else, and now I see why. Victory was far more apocalyptic for the Russians than defeat ever could have been. Shostakovich portrays this, and Previn brings it out wonderfully!