SHOSTAKOVICH: Symphony No. 1 in f, op. 10 (1925). Symphony
No. 3 in E-flat, op. 20 "The First of May" (1929)*.
Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Choir* and Orchestra/Vasily Petrenko.
Naxos 8.572396 TT: 64:33. BUY NOW FROM ARKIVMUSIC
Gripping. Oh, dear Lord! Another series from Naxos, this one an ongoing
integral set of the Shostakovich symphonies with Petrenko and Liverpool.
They've already released numbers 1, 3, 5, and 8-11. How many Naxos series
does this make? I'm currently plowing through the volumes of Igor Markevitch's
complete orchestral work. I've reviewed the Szymanowski series, the Penderecki
series, the Martinu series, the American Classics series, the American
Opera series, the American Jewish Music series, the Bernstein series, the
complete Ives songs, the American Wind Classics series, several recordings
of classic Hollywood film scores, and I'm sure I've forgotten or even missed
a few. Apart from all this, Naxos continues to issue a steady stream of
one-offs. I doubt any other recording company comes close to Naxos's
distribution of new work and suspect it's time to reassess who the "major" classical
labels really are these days. I doubt it's EMI, Sony, or the Universal
group, whose major assets lie in their back catalogues.
Early on, Naxos got stuck with the label of "cheap" and "second-rate." However
true it may have been in the past, it doesn't apply now -- at least no
more than it applies to most other labels you've heard of. These two accounts
of early Shostakovich not only succeed in their own right, they stand among
the very best ever.
The cover photo features a very young, sweetly nerdy Shostakovich holding
a cat in his lap. It was taken two days before the premiere of his first
symphony. Shostakovich began the work at 18 and completed it a year later,
still a student. It outstrips not only most student work, but the work
of quite a few mature composers. It announces a new voice in Modern music.
Shostakovich may have extended his language as he got older, but its basic
elements show up even here. What hit hardest are the complexity of its
nevertheless memorable themes and the sophistication of the symphonic argument.
Other striking features include unusual and effective orchestration, particularly
the composer's fondness for solo trumpet. Most important, everything --
rhythm, harmony, counterpoint, melody, color -- seems in balance. Western
conductors like Klemperer, Walter, and Toscanini quickly took up the work,
and Milhaud and Berg became fans. Although only a fool tries to argue with
a fact, it's still difficult to believe a kid wrote this. The work has
kept its power all these years later.
The Symphony No. 3, like the Symphony No. 2, deals with Communist and Socialist
history. These two symphonies, like the similarly "historical" Symphonies
11 and 12, have not fared as well as their brethren. Part of this may have
to do with the ignorance in the West of the International Labor Movement.
More importantly, critics have ignored Shostakovich's aesthetic basis in
these works. They are, in some sense, programmatic scores, rather than
vessels of classical form. Indeed, in the Third, Shostakovich deliberately
tried to avoid classicism, not completely successfully, in that he aimed
to write a symphony without themes -- that is, musical ideas that recur
and through their repetition shape the symphonic argument. The structure
can seem a "sprawl" -- a one-movement symphony in several sections,
distinguished by rhythm and tempo. What one experiences, I think, is not
chaos, but a fabric woven through with similar shapes, even though they
don't rise to definite themes. Shostakovich has so mastered symphonic time
(he's all of 23) that he can even think of taking this chance. Ironically,
even the Soviet critics condemned it, in the wake of the scandal of Shostakovich's
opera The Nose, on the grounds of "formalism," a charge
without aesthetic meaning, almost always made to keep Soviet artists subservient
to the State, and thus politically corrupt.
I must admit that for many years, "my" Shostakovich symphonies
began with #4. I recognized the importance and the achievement of the First,
but I didn't care for it, despite performances by Bernstein, Ancerl, Jansons,
Rattle, and Ormandy. I had an RCA LP with Morton Gould of the Second and
Third, which failed to convince me that either work merited more effort.
Petrenko and Liverpool have turned me around on numbers 1 and 3. I haven't
heard their other discs, but you can bet I will. I simply haven't heard
such command over Shostakovich's musical narration. The sound is excellent.
On the basis of this single disc, I believe we have what may become the great Shostakovich recorded symphonic cycle.
S.G.S. (August 2011) |