Here we have the Shostakovich ballet that Shostakovich never wrote. True, the music derives from various of the composer's works: The Bolt, The Limpid Stream, The Gadfly, even the Cello Sonata. (The notes to this reissue would be improved by a more comprehensive linking of the ballet's numbers to the source opuses.) It was Lev Atovmyan, not Shostakovich, however, who selected these pieces for a ballet staged in 1962 at the Malegot Theatre in Leningrad. Shostakovich consented to this use of his music, and I imagine that he would have been tickled by the outcome.

The plot of The Young Lady and the Hooligan is based on a film script by Vladimir Mayakovsky. Our protagonist is a violent young thug, whose base nature is conveyed by his theme, pulled from No. 3 in The Bolt suite - this is no less ebullient in Gorenstein's hands than is the original in Rozhdestvensky's (see below). One day the hooligan encounters a young schoolmistress, and falls in love at first sight. When the hooligan's own gang assaults the teacher, the hooligan comes to her aid. His gang sets upon him, and he dies in the teacher's arms.

It should be said that Atovmyan does not merely transplant existing music into the ballet. Major modifications are made to scoring and tempo to suit the needs of the ballet. The most extreme example of this concerns the transfiguration of the hooligan by first love, a process portrayed by an orchestration of the second theme of the Cello Sonata's first movement (from Fig. 6-2 to Fig. 9+7 in the Sonata's score). Atovmyan draws this out to an eyebrow-raising duration; what lasts just two minutes in Shostakovich's recording with Daniil Shafran is extended to over four minutes of soul cleansing in the ballet!

While nobody will claim this to be grand or even premier cru Shostakovich, neither is The Young Lady and the Hooligan deserving of contempt for its parentage. It offers an enjoyable mixture of stirring melodies, like the Romance from The Gadfly (still most recognisable to many as the theme of the TV series Reilly, Ace of Spies), jolly light music and boisterous noisemaking. Atovmyan's selections are evocative of the action in the ballet, making it possible to stage a production in the mind's eye while listening.

Gorenstein and his fine orchestra certainly take this music seriously, playing with great drama, power and sensitivity. The acoustics are natural and the dynamic range wide. This release should please anyone interested in hearing just how adaptable Shostakovich's voice can be to new contexts.

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