The Fall of Berlin, opus 82 (complete score, edited by Adriano)[a]; Suite from The Unforgettable Year 1919, Op 89a[b].
Adriano, Moscow Symphony Orchestra, Moscow Capella and Youth Chorus[a], Sergei Krivobokov (chorus-master)[a], Ellena Alekseyeva (piano)[b].
Marco Polo 8.223897. DDD. TT 75:30.
Recorded Mosfilm Studios, Moscow, March 2000.

Though more of Shostakovich's film music is being recorded it is usually presented in Atovmyan's suites, which cut, supplement, reorder and reorchestrate what Shostakovich wrote, and even now a few scores remain elusive. The reason some of them are overlooked may well be the subject matter. By the 1960s the epics of high Stalinism (including The Fall of Berlin, The Unforgettable Year 1919 and Meeting on the Elbe) were an embarrassment to their participants (biographies often omit or pass quickly over such works, and scores and parts can be difficult to locate) and it is only relatively recently that the period and its art have come in for reassessment.

The Fall of Berlin was one of the first films to break through this attitude - its jaw-droppingly cavalier attitude to historical exactitude makes it a fascinating document of its time. (A restoration by Gosfilmofond and the Cinémathèque de Toulouse from the early 1990s has been shown in many countries. It will be screened at London's National Film Theatre on February 20 and 22, 2003, two earlier showings having been sell-outs.) Mosfilm's no-expense-spared 70th birthday present to Stalin shows his arrival in the eponymous city despite the minor irritation that he was actually in the Soviet Union at that glorious moment. Conversely Zhukov's crucial role is downplayed. Yet the makers also seem to have had access to Soviet intelligence on Hitler's last days, though the portrayal of the deranged dictator will amuse more than terrify.

Shostakovich wrote 45 minutes of music for the film - about 15 minutes of which was omitted from the suite - and Aleksandr Gauk conducted the soundtrack which, containing as it does a fragment from the Seventh Symphony, gives us what is currently our only opportunity to hear him essay any of that work. In the 1950s he recorded the finale and a selection from the suite, while A. Chmyrev led a recording of the song Beautiful Day, after which the music languished unloved until Vladimir Andropov recorded a fanfare in 1982. José Serebrier's 1990 recording finally made it easy to hear the suite (RCA Victor Red Seal RD 60226; deleted) and Mikhail Jurowski followed in 1995 (Capriccio 10 405). Of course the mononymous Adriano's recording doesn't compete with any of these since it is based on Shostakovich's manuscript and is thus nearer to how the music appeared in the film, though given the crudity of some of the music editing we should be glad it is not exactly as it appears therein. The Seventh Symphony excerpt and the pieces not by Shostakovich (Scriabin, Tchaikovsky and others) are excluded.

For those who just want the suite, Serebrier is generally preferable to Jurowski, who favours ponderous tempi and dispenses with the chorus in a couple of movements, though annoyingly Serebrier shortens The Storming of the Seelow Heights.

But in terms of the amount of music Adriano's disc is of course another matter. In compiling the suite Atovmyan kept the main themes but excluded or combined shorter cues and dramatically reordered the music (the suite's Prelude is based on Stalin's arrival in Berlin near the end of the film!). Most of the excluded music is based on what was left in, but a couple of items would have broadened the scope of the suite and their presentation on this disc is welcome. The popular song Beautiful Day ("The flowers will grow and fall/But I will grow from year to year") is given a lively performance with brightly vernal children's voices but more intriguing is Hitler's Reception. Comedy may not be the first thing you would expect in The Fall of Berlin but this wonderfully brainless satirical march is reminiscent of the youthful Shostakovich. We also get to hear the two pianos in The Storming of the Seelow Heights, apparently a try-out for the more successful mini piano concerto of The Unforgettable Year 1919. As the music for this sequence was particularly badly mangled in the film, it's valuable to hear what Shostakovich had in mind, though the later example is superior.

The Unforgettable Year 1919 has yet to enjoy a resurgence comparable to The Fall of Berlin's but who could resist seeing Woodrow Wilson, Clemenceau, Lloyd George and Churchill reacting to the Communist threat? As it is, most people's exposure to it will be through the two extracts (Prelude and Demonstration) which unaccountably supplement the Maxim Trilogy suite, and Alexeev and Maksymiuk's recording of The Assault on Beautiful Gorky for Classics for Pleasure (CD-CFP 4547). Gauk again did the honours on the soundtrack, and went on to record an abbreviated suite which made it to the west on Monitor MC2015 alongside the Ninth Symphony and the Festive Overture, a disc that deserves a reissue.

So, again Adriano has the field to himself with the first recording of the complete 30-minute suite. In this case there is less recoverable 'unknown' Shostakovich in the film so the suite is a fairer reflection of what he wrote, though there are many snippets of other pieces in the film. There's also less fat in the suite, so for example there's no equivalent of the earlier film's rather aimless In the Garden. While the Scherzo obviously presents the orchestra with a few problems, the biggest interpretative disappointment is the 'concerto' (here rendered as The Assault on the Red Hill), which lacks the panache that Alexeev brings to it. A little more tenderness would not have gone amiss in the Romance where the film's 'second' hero - no-one is allowed to overshadow Stalin - meets his fiancée.

Adriano did view both films but was not bound by Gauk's tempi; the ones he chooses work well and both suites are mostly adequately performed. One problem the disc does have is that the music for the two films is stylistically similar; indeed, as the genre reached a point of ossification, the films themselves have themes and scenes in common. Listening with half an ear you might not even realise that the opening flourishes of The Unforgettable Year 1919 did not belong to the earlier film.

The notes by Adriano himself are useful, particularly for The Fall of Berlin giving those unfortunate enough not to know the film an explanation of each cue's role and explaining how he edited the music. Notwithstanding his claim that parts are in black and white, it is an all-colour affair though some parts are very faded. The booklet also presents several stills from both films. It's a pity then that a little room couldn't have been found for the words of the songs from The Fall of Berlin. This may have been planned, as Dolmatovsky gets a credit in the booklet, though Adriano opines that they need not be translated beyond the opening "Slava Stalinu" (which remains stubbornly untranslated!).

Completists will need no urging to buy this disc; it's unlikely that anyone will repeat Adriano's feat with The Fall of Berlin (it would be good to see other films receiving this treatment) and the only complete 1919 suite makes it well-nigh irresistible. Even those less susceptible to the film music will also find much to enjoy. True enough, there are moments of high-Stalinist bombast (and we should not overlook their extra-musical interest) but Shostakovich also manages to slip in some more effective music and even a few touches of comedy and romance that were excluded from The Fall of Berlin suite.

John Riley
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