Dmitri Shostakovich: "The Missing Symphony"
V/Vm Test Records VVMTCD10. TT 47:25.
Remixed by V/Vm.

The very title of this jewel-cased offering is calculated to catch the eye, turn the head or wrest the attention from more predictable occupations such as topping up one's 24 versions of the Tenth Symphony. "Missing Symphony?!" a learned friend recently exclaimed in guarded disbelief; "Who, what, when...?" and his voice drifted off into wonderment.

So - a Sixteenth Symphony finally come to light? At least sketches thereof, notwithstanding Derek Hulme's considered affirmation that the so-called Sixteenth actually corresponded to Shostakovich's opus 145a, the orchestrated Suite on Verses of Michelangelo?

Closer inspection of the CD liner blurb or, better (or worse), putting our hole-in-middle friend in the unsuspecting CD player reveals quite another conception, ethic, soul. To be kind, let's say that the fabricators of this monstrosity deliberately chose to titillate the discerning public through a play on the word "Missing"; the concept is so far off-target that the very concept of concept is indeed a totally missing allusion!

What? Why? Because the idea behind this issue is to fuse together all 15 symphonies, electronically, pulling and stretching their extrapolated waveforms in order to make them 'match'; i.e., so that the different movements more or less begin and stop together. No matter that in so doing all considerations of tempo, pitch, rhythm and harmony get shot to pieces and above all, 'what the heck!' to any quibble regarding any aesthetic, artistic, emotional or musical values that might be sunk on the way!!

The 'composer' states:

'THE CONCEPT:
All fifteen of Dimitri Shostakovich's symphonies were downloaded digitally into a lap-top computer. The mean average [sic] in seconds of every symphony was worked out as being 2842 seconds. Each symphony dependent on length was either stretched or compressed to that length and then layered on top of each other to create a unique classical piece.

'THE CONCLUSION:
The result is staggering. The worlds [sic] first digital classical symphony. The worlds [sic] first symphony which cannot be replicated by classical musicians. Intense in its entirety. The result is "The Missing Symphony".'

On the other hand, on the group's web site we read:

'V/Vm stretched and compressed all of Dmitri Shostakovich's symphonies into one symphony entitled "the missing symphony". Fragments of each symphony fight with each other for audio control making for an uncomfortable listening experience.'

The opening minute of the 'work' - an amalgam of Fourth and Seventh Symphonies, pounding over bedlam of noise - had my cat scuttling for the door, closely followed by my young child, hands over ears. Five minutes later, having gleaned dismembered snatches of Symphonies Nos. 9, 11, 12, 13 and 14, all vying for their own little niche of consciousness, I could take no more. Track 2? More of same, and so on.

But where did the music itself come from? No sources are credited, only a photographed glimpse of a Melodiya CD (USSR Ministry of Culture with Maestro Rozhdestvensky) gives the slightest clue as the origins of the collective din.

A wonderful 21st century exercise in the electrification of Russian-Soviet repertoire, or a grotesque effrontery to same? No prizes, at all...

Nigel Papworth
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