Shostakovich Symphonies, Cycles & Otherwise

[Daverz]

Quote from: Scots John on July 19, 2012, 05:36:43 PM
I must get that.  That must be the same night as Rostropovich did Czech Dvoraks Cello Concerto to the same audience.  Brilliant.  It is my No1 on must get.

I transferred Svetlanov's Melodiya recording of the 10th from an Angel-Melodiya Lp:

http://www.mediafire.com/?czyapx45p8z23

[aukhawk]

What are some of the top recordings of Shostakovich's 4th, 5th, 8th, 10th and 11th symphonies?

Confining myself to these five, my choices:
5th  I really like Previn's original (RCA) version with the LSO, almost his first recording after crossing over from 'dinner jazz'.
8th  I like Previn/LSO (EMI) here too - but recently I've enjoyed Oleg Caetani - very pacey, a remarkably 'Russian' sound from an Italian orchestra!
10th  I go with Svetlanov/USSR SO - and for a modern recording I like Petrenko.
11th  I've got memories of Stokowski in this, or De Priest/Helsinki.
4th  I leave till last - I've got the Jarvi but really I'm still looking - I might give Wigglesworth a try.

I love Haitink in Mahler, but find him a bit too straight-laced (aka boring) in Shostakovich.    The 15th is his best shot.
Petrenko's cycle is excellent performance-wise, but I find the recordings a bit problematic - just too good  too much dynamic range, I find myself riding the volume all the time.

OT - 1st Symphony - Ormandy, and Caetani (big contrast between these two!)
6th  Petrenko,  9th Kondrashin,  15th (my favourite) Sanderling.

[Sergeant Rock]

15th (my favourite) Sanderling.

Cleveland or Berlin? 

Sarge

[pbarach]

Haitink's 4th with Chicago is livelier than his earlier recording. Ormandy/Philly is also an excellent recording. I think Jarvi got poor sound--it gets very muddy and shrill in the louder portions.

For the 5th, I really like Rostropovich's first recording with the National Symphony (was on DGG). His LSO recording is less inspired and has miserable Barbican Hall sound.

[trung224]

Haitink's 4th with Chicago is livelier than his earlier recording. Ormandy/Philly is also an excellent recording. I think Jarvi got poor sound--it gets very muddy and shrill in the louder portions.

For the 5th, I really like Rostropovich's first recording with the National Symphony (was on DGG). His LSO recording is less inspired and has miserable Barbican Hall sound.

I really like Rostropovich's first Shostakovich 5 too. But I really don't know why at this time, when beginning conducting, not communicate well with the musician (he don't know English well), National Symphony Orchestral is only second-rate orchestra, Rostropovich can deliver such great performance but his two remake (with LSO and National SYmphony on Teldec) is very boring, uninspired.

[Karl Henning]

An orchestra's being second rate doesn't mean they are absolutely incapable of the occasional great performance, mind you.

[Karl Henning]

My initial listen to a disc of the Caetani cycle did not really wow me.  But, curious now to hear what he made of the Op.43 . . . .

[alkan]

Much to my surprise, my pick for the best recording of Op 43 is Rattle and the CBSO.    Great performance by both conductor and orchestra, and a terrific sound.    The final coda is awesome  ...  cataclysmic, then really eerie ....      Only Kondrashin gets close, but the recorded sound is not the same standard.     

[Archaic Torso of Apollo]

Much to my surprise, my pick for the best recording of Op 43 is Rattle and the CBSO.    Great performance by both conductor and orchestra, and a terrific sound.    The final coda is awesome  ...  cataclysmic, then really eerie ....      Only Kondrashin gets close, but the recorded sound is not the same standard.   

I second that. The creepy/ eerie/ apocalyptic character of the work comes out really well on this one.

[Karl Henning]

Very interesting, gents.  I just re-visited that one last night, and for my money . . . it's an impressive effort, great sound, fabulous execution on the part of the band, but . . . .

More than in any recording other than Gergiev's (which I should re-visit, as well) I find that a few of Sir Simon's tempo choices had me posing the rhetorical question, What was he thinking?  There was one of the earlyish bassoon solos which was so rubato-ish that I felt they were almost lost (I mean, they couldn't have been, that was what was meant, but that was the musical impression it left me with).  And there was an extended section of the third movement which was just too fast.  Again: obviously a tour-de-force in terms of both the ability and will of the conductor, and of the capacity of the orchesta; but I could not feel that it was musically motivated.  (Though, I am guessing, you may likely feel otherwise.)

Against such considerations, there are several positives for the performance/recording. But overall (of course, YMMV) there are half a dozen recordings of which I think rather better.

[alkan]

Hi Karl,

And there was an extended section of the third movement which was just too fast.  Again: obviously a tour-de-force in terms of both the ability and will of the conductor, and of the capacity of the orchesta; but I could not feel that it was musically motivated.  (Though, I am guessing, you may likely feel otherwise.)

I am guessing that the extended section in the 3rd mvt that you are referring to is the one with two note descending (and sometimes ascending) motif that is repeated endlessly for bar after bar.   I always found that quite boring and I'm quite glad that Sir Simon skims through it (and actually generates a bit of excitement).   

I find that a few of Sir Simon's tempo choices had me posing the rhetorical question, What was he thinking?

I think that in this passage Sir Simon was thinking "what on earth was Shostakovich thinking here?"   

In general, given the loose and often grotesque nature of the work, I think a conductor has a lot of freedom to try to make sense of it in his own particular way.   

By the way, concerning extreme tempos, have you heard Kurt Sanderling's version of the 5th Symphony?   I was quite shocked at the incredible slowness of the final coda, but having read Sanderling's article (in the booklet) I find that it really works and is better than the usual "blaze of glory" endings from all other conductors.

Back to the 4th, I have to admit that I often dip into the final part of the finale ..... the apocalypse and the aftermath.    The adrenalin really starts to flow when the big drum starts up with a rhythm that always makes me think of a huge menacing bouncy ball heading straight at me.     And the dissonance screamed out by the trumpets is pure genius.   What a shock that generates on first hearing!   The phantasmorgoric ending always makes my spine tingle ... when the bass rhythm switches from 3 notes to 2, the lamenting strings, the bizzare woodwind colours, the distant and threatening drumroll .... it's incredible how much menace and power is conveyed by a simple, soft crescendo/diminuendo of the drum.       And I love Sir S's concentrated performance and the wonderful sound in this part .....

Karl, what performances are your favourites for the 4th ?

[Karl Henning]

Hi Karl,

I am guessing that the extended section in the 3rd mvt that you are referring to is the one with two note descending (and sometimes ascending) motif that is repeated endlessly for bar after bar.

Good morning, and thanks for entertaining my dissent!. : ) In fact, I had to go back to the recording this morning . . . I've been on something of an Opus 43 orgy, and in the interval, I had listened to the Barshai, which I found rather rushed in other places.

I knew the spot you meant, right off, for I admit that — not the first time I heard the piece, but the first time I heard the piece and felt that I actually liked it, and pretty thoroughly liked it — that was the one section on which I had some doubts, though even at the time, I was sure that if I dug into its guts, it would relate to a number of themes running through the whole piece.

My complaint actually is not in that section, but both before — the very head of that grand section, starting right after the keening oboes (and clarinets) [p.144] and after — you know the bit you practically cannot miss when, after all the motoric hocket, the oboes (and clarinets, again) come in with the descending accented half-note - quarter-note | quarter-note motif, all the way through to the massive trombone unison which cuts through the full orchestral accents [p.169] and on, until the piccolo / bass clarinet musette.

The thing is (what I have just checked, inspired by your kind inquiry), Shostakovich marks that Allegro on p.144 as the dotted-half-note at 84 . . . and Sir Simon definitely pushes that into the 94-100 range.  Then, it becomes a discussion of whether the markedly faster tempo is within interpretive license.

And my back-of-the-envelope reaction was, that the paragraphs before and after the hocket suffered.

By the way, concerning extreme tempos, have you heard Kurt Sanderling's version of the 5th Symphony?   I was quite shocked at the incredible slowness of the final coda, but having read Sanderling's article (in the booklet) I find that it really works and is better than the usual "blaze of glory" endings from all other conductors.

Back to the 4th, I have to admit that I often dip into the final part of the finale ..... the apocalypse and the aftermath.    The adrenalin really starts to flow when the big drum starts up with a rhythm that always makes me think of a huge menacing bouncy ball heading straight at me.     And the dissonance screamed out by the trumpets is pure genius.   What a shock that generates on first hearing!   The phantasmorgoric ending always makes my spine tingle ... when the bass rhythm switches from 3 notes to 2, the lamenting strings, the bizzare woodwind colours, the distant and threatening drumroll .... it's incredible how much menace and power is conveyed by a simple, soft crescendo/diminuendo of the drum.       And I love Sir S's concentrated performance and the wonderful sound in this part .....

Karl, what performances are your favourites for the 4th ?

Ah, the finale of the Fifth! It's quite a challenge to make the "slow" take on the finale convincing . . . no, I've not heard the Sanderling.

Over at the WAYLTN thread, Ray (ChamberNut) asked the same : )

Probably my favorite accounts of the Fourth are: Haitink / Chicago; Maksim Dmitriyevich / Prague; Rostropovich / National Symphony. I still have some sentimental fondness for the Previn / Chicago, because that was the recording which sold me on the piece.

I'm revisiting the Gergiev and Jansons to-day . . . .

[alkan]

Thanks for the detailed reply Karl.     It gives me a little-needed excuse to listen to the finale again, but with new ears after reading your insights.

Concerning the Sanderling 5th, it is only the final peroration that is slow, not the whole movement.   The effect is unsettling if you are expecting the usual triumphant, "long live Stalin and the communist party" type ending.   The effect is more like a kind of sullen "enforced enthusiasm", which is actually bordering on defiance.    I don't think that it could be played that way at its premiere (otherwise no more symphonies at all ....), but Sanderling maintains (based on conversations with Shostakovich in later life) that this is Shostakovich's real intention.

Sanderling had some interesting views.   He also said that the percussion at the end of the 15th symphony represents (I quote) "an intensive care ward in a hospital: the person is attached to various contraptions, and the dials and screens indicate that heartbeat and brain activity are gradually expiring, then comes a last convulsion and it's all over"     This transforms a rhythmic and snappy percussion ballet into something quite chilling ....

[Karl Henning]

Thanks for the detailed reply Karl.     It gives me a little-needed excuse to listen to the finale again, but with new ears after reading your insights.

Concerning the Sanderling 5th, it is only the final peroration that is slow, not the whole movement [....]

I understood you, though perhaps my reply came out a bit ambiguous.

I wonder, now, if I have any recording of the Fifth with that markedly slow tempo from rehearsal mark 131. Just now searching via Google, very curiously, I found a link to a post of my own on perhaps 'The Old GMG':

The finale of the Fifth I have found a curious question.  Recalls the Bigendian/Smallendian debate in some ways :-)

And the drivers are so ephemeral.  There's the characteristically colorful story in Testimony (and how do we know that's actually Shostakovich talking?)  The typically unfathomable Shostakovich deadpan of the 'broken metronome' remark.  The postcard returned to Celibidache with the laconic "Da" (which, again, knowing both the state of operation of the Soviet postal system, and how some missives wound up on desks of the KGB and never actually reached recipients . . . I just cannot think it much of a document to go on).

Upon this insufficient foundation, in part, we have [ fast ending = triumph / slow ending = dissident sarcasm ] as something of a "line in the sand," in some quarters.

I don't have the firm answer, obviously.  But two of my asides are:

1.) Shostakovich was in probably the tightest of a number of tight spots he experienced throughout his career.  Too much depended on the piece making the right impression in the right quarters;  he was not in the position here, to take the musical risk of (say) the Ninth later on during the war.  So, I'm not sure this was the occasion for him to play such a daring card.  Obviously, I cannot say one way or the other, absolutely.

2.) I consider how broad the ending of the 'Leningrad'  Symphony is, and how unambiguously triumphant.  I don't think it at all a 'slam dunk' that breadth of tempo in the finale of the Fifth, maps onto scornful dissidence.

Well, I do have one: the Ben Zander / Boston Philharmonic which makes something of a didactic point of taking those six pages half as fast.  The result is not, I fear, a musical success in that recording — which is not any definitive ruling, of course.

Visiting three recordings in short order to-day, the Temirkanov / St Petersburg Philharmonic recording carries that passage more deliberately, though not absolutely at half-time, and it works very musically.

Hmm, Sanderling, eh? . . .

[Karl Henning]

Well, revisiting the Gergiev in the Fourth was a good exercise.  For the greater part of the first movement, he's quite musical.  There are just two places in the first movement where he either the moderately peculiar, or the inexplicable;  and I can only suppose that those bits jarred enough, that that pretty much gauged the recording for me.

[Karl Henning]

[ Cross-post ]

First listen to this recording:

Дмитри Дмитриевич [ Dmitri Dmitriyevich (Shostakovich) ]
Симфония № 4 c-moll, соч. 43 [ Symphony № 4 in c minor, Opus 43 ]
Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano Giuseppe Verdi
Oleg Caetani

[asin]B000IY035U[/asin]

The first Caetani disc I heard contained the Ninth and Tenth Symphonies; I was not crazy about it – all right, I'll go ahead and say meh – although I might perhaps have listened a bit more generously, had I not heard more than one enthusiast praise the Caetani cycle unto the skies.  (I haven't catalogued my quarrels with the Ninth or Tenth, but can attend to that task if there be interest.)  Still, because at least one fellow musician whose opinion I take seriously (even though our tastes do disagree at a few points) has spoken highly of the cycle overall . . . and because, possibly as a partial result of my new-found enthusiasm for Bruckner, I've lately experienced a resurgent fascination with the Op.43 . . . I was curious to try Caetani out here.

This performance is marvelously good, and entirely enjoyable.  Are there recordings of this complex symphony with which I have no quibble at all?  I think there may be, one or even two.  With the present recording, my quarrels are refreshingly few, and non-fatal. The string fugato in the first movement feels a bit cautiously under-tempo – but then, I respect that more than driving the tempo fast, and failing to hold the string choir together (I'm talking to you, Rudolf).  Overall, it is a splendidly musical performance, and sheer pleasure to listen to.

[Octave]

Basic helpless question re: a full-cycle recommendation; please ignore or respond by PM if it's too much of an intrusion on thread conversation. 

I've worked my way through most of this thread and spent quite a bit of time with sound samples, but for the moment I feel drawn to get one or two more ~full-cycle sets of the symphonies before beginning piecemeal collection in earnest.  I only own the Barshai/NDR (in its Brilliant Classics issue), and I listened to the Haitink box one time.  Both have been powerful, but all I'm really hearing so far is the Shostakovich, such as it is.  I don't know if I've seen a surfeit of discussion on the overall merits of various full cycles over the past ~few years, unless I've just missed such discussion again and again.   
Two that I know I want are the Kondrashin and the Rozhdestvensky, but for the moment neither these is especially affordable, particularly the Rozhd; I'm going to hedge my bets on reissues. 
Two others of which I keep hearing mixed reports are the Jansons and Maxim Shostakovich.  How any of these, or others, compare on the whole to two I've heard (Barshai/Haitink) would be of interest.
Of course, I'm not fixated at all on the cycles I've mentioned.

Again, please PM me if in fact this ground has been trawled too often before.

[Karl Henning]

Actually, I think that perfectly on point, and it is no intrusion in the least.

I also think it may be that you will get as many different answers, as neighbors who answer : )

With both Jansons and Shostakovich fils, the profile of the recording is delightfully clear, the bands are well rehearsed . . . for me, there is nothing which gets in the way of any of the symphonies.

I've not heard all of the Jansons, but I find his recordings of the Eighth, Tenth, Thirteenth and Fifteenth excellent indeed (I need to revisit him in the Fourth, so I shall tentatively point out that others highly endorse that 'un, too); and in the others which I remember listening to (nos. 1-3), fully competitive ; )

Maksim Dmitriyevich's set is essentially my reference. The adjective authoritative tends to be applied to Kondrashin and Barshai, and of course it applies equally well to the son of the composer;  with Maksim Dmitriyevich, there is also a cool-headedness which I find a refreshing benefit.

[jlaurson]

Basic helpless question re: a full-cycle recommendation; please ignore or respond by PM if it's too much of an intrusion on thread conversation. 

Two others of which I keep hearing mixed reports are the Jansons and Maxim Shostakovich.  How any of these, or others, compare on the whole to two I've heard (Barshai/Haitink) would be of interest.
Of course, I'm not fixated at all on the cycles I've mentioned.

Again, please PM me if in fact this ground has been trawled too often before.

The heights of Jansons' cycles include some of the finest DSCH recordings in modern sound... especially those with the BRSO, but also the Pittsburgh 8th, for example.

http://ionarts.blogspot.com/2006/04/jansons-latest-in-shostakovich.html
http://ionarts.blogspot.com/2005/04/mariss-jansonss-dsch-4.html
http://ionarts.blogspot.com/2005/07/shostakovich-8th-with-rostropovich-on.html

That said, it's not the most even cycle... an Oslo Vienna 5th is rather so-so, ditto the LSO 15.

Maxim's "Czech" cycle never quite did it for me... the magic -- alleged or real -- of earlier recordings is something I'm missing... perhaps it's not even there. Karl rather likes that cycle, though, if I gathered correctly, and may be able to speak more to what he considers its particular strengths (or weaknesses).  [He seems to have done so, by the time I've gotten around to hit "Post"]

Kondrashin (Melodiya) is one elemental part of the DSCH puzzle. Also not the answer to all your questions, but a stupendous alternative to have.

[Daverz]

Maxim's "Czech" cycle never quite did it for me... the magic -- alleged or real -- of earlier recordings is something I'm missing... perhaps it's not even there.

Not sure what you mean by "earlier recordings".  Maxim's Soviet era recordings of 5 and 15 were somewhat famous.  I don't think the 15th ever made it to CD.