Symphony No. 6 in B minor, opus 54[a]; Symphony No. 12, opus 112, The Year 1917[b].
Yevgeny Mravinsky, Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra.
PR 7254017. ADD mono. TT 65:51.
Recorded live Prague, 21 May 1955[a]; 6 January 1962[b].

Symphony No. 11 in G minor, opus 103.
Yevgeny Mravinsky, Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra.
PR 7254018. ADD mono. TT 60:49.
Recorded live Prague, 3 June 1967.

NOTE: Since this review was written, the recordings of Symphonies Nos. 5, 6, 11 and 12 reissued in this 25th Anniversary Edition have been identified as being reproductions of original recordings made in Vienna and Russia, not Prague. In the Eleventh and Twelfth Symphonies, audience noises have been added to the original studio recordings. For reference purposes, my review is reproduced below unedited, but the recording venue and date data above, as listed by Praga, are incorrect. Full details are contained in my report in DSCH No. 15 on misattributed recordings on the Praga label. WMR.

With the exception of that of the Ninth, all of these symphony recordings appeared in the Mravinsky in Prague edition reviewed in our last issue; the Eleventh also turned up in DSCH No. 9 in an even earlier Praga incarnation. They all merit hearing.

Former Karel Ancerl student Zdenek Kosler's view of the Ninth Symphony is new to these pages, replacing the Mravinsky in Prague set's excellent Bartok Concerto for Orchestra as stable-mate of the Fifth Symphony. A few conspicuously mistaken notes aside, it is a nimble traversal of this quirky terrain. Listen in particular for fine brass playing. The 1981 recording is clear and nicely balanced, and the audience is tolerable.

Kosler expands the fourth movement, Largo, to epic lengths, a common practice that is reportedly contrary to Shostakovich's intention. It thus gains some of the icy grandeur of the Sixth Symphony's first movement. Any irony lost in the process is more than compensated for by the following movement, which Kosler and the Czech Philharmonic toss off flippantly. Annotator Pierre-E. Barbier puts it well when he writes that Slavic interpreters are "not fooled by a Shostakovich parodying himself: Kubelik, Ancerl and, more recently, Kosler, have rendered its [the symphony's] tragic ambiguity". Few readers, I wager, would begrudge this CD shelf space.

Top