Shostakovich: Theatre Music
Piano arrangements by the composer[a]/Lev Solin[b] of music from The Human Comedy[b]: March, The Panorama of Paris, Police March§, Waltz, Sarabande, Gavotte and Trio; The Bedbug: Intermezzo[b]§, Scene in the Boulevard[b], Waltz[a]§, March[a], Foxtrot[a]§, Galop[a]§, Closing March[b]; Conditionally Killed[a]: The Field, Polka, The Flight of Angels, The Jugglers§, Dance, Bacchanalia; Hamlet, opus 32: Lullaby[b], The Players' Pantomime[b], Dead March[b], Gigue[b], March of Fortinbras[b], The Hunt[a], Night Watch[b], Dance Music[b]; Salute, Spain![b]: March, Funeral March; Russian River: Football (piano reduction by V. Samarin); King Lear: A Scene from Act III[a]; The Age of Gold: Polka[a]§.
Rustem Hayroudinoff (piano).
Chandos CHAN 9907. DDD. TT 67:59.
Recorded Potton Hall, Suffolk, 7 & 8 August 2000.
World premiere recordings of arrangements except §.

The ever-fascinating world of Shostakovich's incidental music takes the form of solo piano arrangements on this delightful new disc from Chandos. It is a programme that features rarely and sometimes never-before recorded repertoire, providing top-drawer entertainment and archival value.

To date, recordings of the composer's light music for solo piano have concentrated on a few works written for children (e.g., Children's Notebook, Dances of the Dolls), as well as arrangements of isolated numbers from a handful of ballet scores, including the famous Polka from the Age of Gold. The current disc takes the laudable initiative of expanding this repertoire into rich and often unexplored territory. In delving into this literature, pianist Rustem Hayroudinoff has struck a gold mine of raw material.

Almost all of Shostakovich's music for the theatre and stage dates from a youth yet-untraumatised by the notorious Pravda attacks of 1936. Regrettably, the condemnations shifted his focus away from this genre to which he was so instinctively drawn. The legacy that remains, representing the finest work of his early years, sparkles with wit, idiosyncratic humour, and abundant imagination. The sampling on this disc offers a broadside view of this fertile period of creativity.

The programme spans the entire period during which Shostakovich wrote incidental music. It focuses on four works written between the years 1929 and 1934: The Bedbug (1929), Conditionally Killed (1931), Hamlet (1932), and The Human Comedy (1933-34). The programme also contains selections from Salute, Spain! (1936) and two final contributions dating from the 1940s. Within these brilliant miniatures we find the composer exploring the diabolical calculus of irony and the grotesque. With a lyrical gift that is as ingratiating as it is idiosyncratic, the music today preserves all of its original freshness and irreverence.

The incidental music to The Bedbug was the 23-year-old Shostakovich's first contribution to the non-operatic stage. Tailored to the progressive tastes of its illustrious director (Meyerhold) and playwright (Mayakovsky), the score has not lost its power to amuse or raise eyebrows. The suite is made up of the traditional dance forms that are found in almost all of Shostakovich's work. Here they appear as a melancholic Waltz, a defiantly dissonant March, a Foxtrot whose mood remains wistful despite many sharp turns, and a gleeful Galop that also turns up in his music to the film New Babylon. The opening Intermezzo is one of the most fascinating numbers on the album. With its many cinematic transitions and sudden mood shifts, it is vividly suggestive of Shostakovich's teenage job experiences improvising on piano to the silent screen. The image so conjured is alone worth the price of the disc.

Another highlight is the oft-recorded suite written for the staging of Hamlet by Nikolai Akimov. In this revisionist production, composer and director take a decidedly humorous slant on Shakespeare's tragedy (this stands in diametric contrast to the predominantly dark vision found in Shostakovich's music to the Kozintsev film of the same name some 30 years later). In this score we find Shostakovich probing more sophisticated levels of satire in a broader and somewhat more unified lyrical context. The piano version is a pure delight. The eight numbers recorded here include a Lullaby, the skittishly syncopated Players Pantomime; the mercurial Hunt; Dead March, with its quasi-regal bearing; and not least, the finely turned March of Fortinbras, which has gained some fame independent of the suite.

The music hall production of Conditionally Killed came to light in 1993 with the performance of Gerard McBurney's reconstructed version of the score on Cala 1020 (released as Hypothetically Murdered). The work's irrepressible jollity is represented here in six numbers that include the giddy Jugglers, a pensive reverie, The Field, that well might have served as one of the composer's opus 34 Preludes, and Flight of Angels, as seraphic a miniature as you'll find in the Shostakovich repertoire.

The Human Comedy consists of a set of merry-making dances that proffer a more conventional brand of lyricism. Many of its memorable tunes would be later recast in a more sanitized form in the three Atovmyan-arranged Ballet Suites of the early 1950s.

Football, the only extract from Russian River, is a first-rate little discovery that reaches its line of scrimmage fleet-footed and virtuosic. A set of august marches makes up the two extracts from Salute, Spain!, and the dignified music to King Lear, dating from 1940, is also represented by a march tune.

Of the 32 arrangements on this disc, 13 were made by the composer, himself, while 18 are credited to one Lev Solin, and the remaining one, from Russian River, to V. Samarin. Not much more is revealed about these elusive arrangers either in the pages of the score or in Eric Roseberry's liner notes. The notes are otherwise very informative about the plot outlines of these often-obscure productions.

Chandos' claim that all but Police March from The Human Comedy and Intermezzo from The Bedbug are world premiere recordings requires some clarification and correction. Shostakovich himself can be heard playing his piano arrangement of Polka from The Age of Gold on a deleted Revelation CD (RV 70008). In 1981, Swedish label Bluebell issued an LP with a selection of piano arrangements of Prokofiev's and Shostakovich's music that included the latter's The Age of Gold Polka, Jugglers from Conditionally Killed, and the Foxtrot, Waltz, and Galop from The Bedbug (Bell 126). Pianist Inger Wikstrom's lighter touch and more playful tempi on that album made a good first sampling of this music.

While these miniatures, with their standard accompaniment figurations, do not make the greatest technical demands, they are pleasingly pianistic. The gauge of its performance is how well the pianist can thread together the music's many melodic and harmonic eccentricities, and recreate its uniquely satiric spirit. This is no easy task. The combined classical and vaudevillian character allows a wide range of interpretation. How campy should the playing style be and how much of the music's dignity should be preserved?

Hayroudinoff makes a wonderful case for these miniatures, with a decided nod to elegance. His performances are buoyant, energetic, full of swagger, yet marked by the polish and grace of a conservatory-trained pianist. In a movement such as Scene on the Boulevard from The Bedbug, he effortlessly segues in and out of the tremolo octave inserts, and negotiates its sly elisions as if passing winks to the listener from the keyboard. In the Closing March, the wonderfully off-balance tune in the bass register is captured with all of its intended mordancy. The manic side of the composer also comes across in mercurial movements like The Hunt from Hamlet. The quietly lyrical movements are played with sensitivity, such as the lovely Sarabande from The Human Comedy, and the delicate Lullaby from Hamlet.

There are times when one wishes for a little less finesse and more of a rough-hewn approach, especially when the music is at its most villainously prankish. The sharp turns in the Age of Gold Polka, for example, are just a bit too polished; the episodic Foxtrot and the dissonant March from The Bedbug could tolerate being a tad more rough-and-tumble. These few tamed moments do not, however, mar an otherwise handsome set of interpretations.

By delving into this obscure repertoire, Rustem Hayroudinoff has reopened a musical Pandora's Box. Listeners who may wonder whether there is more of it waiting to be discovered may be reassured: yes, there is. Consulting Volume 28 of the Moscow Publisher's Edition of the Complete Works, entirely devoted to piano arrangements of the composer's theatre music, one finds, for example, that the seven extracts from The Bedbug recorded here do not comprise the complete suite, but leave behind movements with such enticing titles as Wedding Scene, Pioneer March, March of the Father's Town, Fire, Fire Alarm, and Chorus of Fire. Similarly, there are yet-to-be-recorded morsels found in the scores of The Human Comedy, Russian River, etc. Many of these selections include vocal parts and could obviously not be included on a solo piano album. Hopefully, the endeavour of recording this volume in its entirety will be undertaken some day.

In the meantime, Chandos have given us a glowing showcase of Shostakovich miniatures from the years of the composer's theatrical prime. A sure pleaser.

Louis Blois
Top