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Dmitri Shostakovich: Symphonies Nos. 2, 3, 12 & 13 (DG)
★★☆☆☆
I can’t keep in mind a pre-Christmas season that began so sluggishly, with out an apparent blockbuster on show. DG and Sony are main with cultish solo pianists; Warner are dormant. Jonas Kaufmann is singing weakly about cinema. There aren’t any massive releases on the market to drive a wholesome financial system.
I turned to the continuation of the Boston Shostakovich cycle, which I’ve reviewed earlier than with some enthusiasm. The conductor Andris Nelsons is a Latvian who grew up in a post-Soviet nation nonetheless shadowed by Shostakovich’s ghosts. The Boston Symphony Orchestra sound stronger on file than any of the unique Russian performers, and the sense of two musical superpowers colliding in controversial works provides a frisson of pleasure to an bold enterprise.
This newest instalment within the cycle comprises three unsaleable symphonies and an indomitable fourth. Shostakovich’s second symphony celebrates the tenth anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution, the third its world vacation, Might Day. The composer, nonetheless naively hopeful about communism, produces puppyish frolics in rose-tinted sonorities. In his 20s, he may be forgiven for naivety.
The twelfth symphony, ‘the yr 1917’, arrives three a long time later, burying the composer’s disillusionment beneath a propagandist title. The thirteenth symphony is Babi Yar, Shostakovich’s nice ethical outcry towards institutional Soviet antisemitism and Holocaust complicity. Every of those troubling works requires a uncommon amalgam of mental readability and bodily propulsion.
Nelsons doesn’t impress on both depend. These are over-simplified, underpowered readings of 4 massive scores. Within the second and twelfth symphonies, there are moments you’ll be able to nearly hear the music working out of gasoline. In Babi Yar, orchestra and refrain pound away at unrewarding tempi. The baritone soloist Matthias Goerne does his greatest. However, the conductor appears absent from the room, unwilling to commit to 1 decision over one other. It is a dispiriting album. Let’s hope the label has one thing stronger in retailer within the very important gross sales weeks forward.
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Norman Lebrecht is likely one of the most widely-read commentators on music, tradition and cultural politics. He’s a daily presenter on BBC Radio 3 and a contributor to the Wall Road Journal, Bloomberg, Standpoint, Sinfini and different publications. His weblog, Slipped Disc, is among the many most generally learn cultural websites on-line, breaking unique tales and campaigning towards human abuse and acts of injustice within the cultural industries.
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