Shostakovich: Complete Songs, Volume 5 - 1948-1974: Famous Vocal Cycles
From Jewish Folk Poetry, opus 79[a]; Suite on Verses of Michelangelo Buonarroti, opus 145[b].
Svetlana Sumatchova (soprano)[a], Marianna Tarassova (mezzo-soprano)[a], Konstantin Pluzhnikov (tenor)[a], Fyodor Kuznetsov (bass)[b], Yuri Serov (piano).
Delos DE 3317. DDD. TT 63:09.
Recorded in St. Catherine Lutheran Church, St. Petersburg, 19 and 20 March 1995[a], 26 and 27 February 2003[b].

All good things must come to an end, even as good a thing as Delos' landmark survey of the complete songs of Shostakovich. This fifth and final release brings their much-acclaimed project - the first of its kind in recording history - to a close with two fitting capstones: the mighty From Jewish Folk Poetry and Suite on Verses of Michelangelo. How good it is to finally have in one comprehensive series the composer's art songs of every period, from Krylov Fables of the student years to his penultimate opus, the Captain Lebyadkin verses, and everything in between. Well, almost everything; for example, missing are Dundee's Romance from the incidental music to the comedy The Gunshot, opus 24, previously recorded only once for a 1995 BBC broadcast, and the never-recorded Rosita's Song from Salute to Spain, opus 44. However, one can hardly fault Delos for leaving out such obscurities in their claim to completeness. They have spared no effort in assembling a production of extraordinarily high calibre. Performances, recording, packaging, annotation, and texts have been superb throughout.

If Delos can be faulted at all it is only for failing to take promotional advantage of their own recording milestones. World premiere recordings of works in original or alternate versions appear throughout the series without a word of notice; a little advertising savvy in this regard would be a very good thing. With characteristic modesty, Delos fail to mention a worthy selling point of the current album: the orchestral versions of the Jewish Poetry and Michelangelo cycles have grown so popular over the past decade that it has been at least as long since their versions with piano accompaniment have been recorded. Their restoration is long overdue.

One would think that the chamber-like quality of the piano versions might have made them more popular over the decades. Yet of the sixteen previous recordings of FJFP and the eight complete versions of the Michelangelo Suite listed in the Third Edition of the Hulme catalogue, only four of the former and three of the latter appear with piano accompaniment. The premiere recording of FJFP, which has been re-released numerous times (most recently on Eclectra ECCD-2067; reviewed below) lays claim to authoritative status by virtue of the composer being the accompanist and the vocalists those who premiered the work. It remains a vital rendition that touches a raw nerve with its immediacy, compromised only by its mono, mid-1950s sound quality. The next piano version came out of Germany in 1984 and was sung in the German language (Thorofon Capella LP MTH 267; deleted). It lacks the vocal quality, both individually and collectively, of its competitors. A better German language rendition, recorded at the 1980 Aspen Music Festival yet only released in 1995 (Bridge BCD 9048), features an all-star cast consisting of Benita Valente, Jan DeGaetani, and Jon Humphrey, with accompanist Samuel Lipman. They offer a strong, outwardly projected performance marked by good ensemble work. A fourth piano version sung in Yiddish and released in 1985 by B'nai Brith on cassette only (BB 001), has so far eluded me.

In the mid-1990s there emerged a succession of new recordings of the orchestral version of FJFP, as if the recordings of Sanderling, Svetlanov and Haitink, issued at least a decade earlier, had suddenly found sympathetic ears, stimulating freshly imagined interpretations focusing on less exploited shades of expression. Some conductors went to melodramatic extremes in their attempts to extract an operatic dimension from the work, as in the version by Polyansky (Chandos CHAN 9600; reviewed in DSCH No. 10) and the rather uneven performance by Rozhdestvensky (RCA 09026 68434-2; deleted). But a few pearls emerged from the harvest by way of the more balanced renditions of Spivakov (Music Masters 01612 67189-2; deleted; reviewed in DSCH No. 9), Yurovsky (rendered "Jurowski" on Capriccio 10 778; reviewed in DSCH No. 12), and a particularly fine interpretation by Järvi (Deutsche Grammophon 439 860-2; deleted).

This brings us to the current performance of FJFP where, for no specified reason, Delos abandon the cast of vocalists who have been featured in each of their previous four albums. Here, three new vocalists are introduced and make their first and only appearance in the series. The Delos team was perhaps well advised in adopting the trio in toto rather than in part since the voices blend particularly well together. This is evident in the various pairings throughout and especially in the songs that feature all three singing together (Winter and the final Happiness).

Marianna Tarassova is a real find, a mezzo-soprano with a rich authoritative tone that rises from the depths of her Russia bosom. She furnishes a genuine anchoring point to the ensemble. Her duets with soprano Sumatchova in the first two songs, Lament for a Dead Baby and Caring for Mum and Auntie (The solicitous mother and aunt), reveal a very pleasing blending of vocal tones. Her moment in the spotlight, the haunting Lullaby (No. 3), is delivered with heartfelt eloquence and made especially moving by the ritardandi she takes at the end of each phrase. Hers compares favourably to other notable renditions of this song: the evocative, world-weary version provided by Nathalie Stutzman in the Järvi edition; or the broadly flowing versions of Ludmila Kuznetsova (Polyansky) and Elena Svechnikova (Spivakov).

The husky tenor of Konstantin Pluzhnikov lends support with a firm tone and dramatic vibrancy. Listen to his stirring climactic interchange with Ms. Tarassova in No. 6, The Abandoned Father. He also shines in his featured solos, shifting with agility between the jaunty outer sections and central cantilena of No. 7, the Poverty Song (Song of want). He also comes across well in the pastoral strains of The Good Life (No. 9). A tenor of similar charismatic vitality, Arkadi Mischenkin, can be found in the Yurovsky release.

Svetlana Sumatchova is a soprano of buoyant energy who provides a compatible counterweight to the more earthy hues of her cohorts. Her wiry tone can at times sound a bit pinched, yet she brings off an admirable rendition of the soprano's principal spotlight in this cycle, the beautiful Girl's Song (No. 10). Compare the breadth and nobility that Luba Orgonosova brings to this number in the Järvi version; or the supple, full-bodied rendition by Nina Fomina in the Yurovsky. In the premiere recording, Nina Dorliak's virtuosic ability to keep apace with Shostakovich's brisk tempo warrants notice. Sumatchova is also effective in her other solo in No. 5, Warning.

The present performance shines with a lustre all its own. The combination of voices, clarity of enunciation, colourful nuances and detailed focus on the texts suggests that FJFP is something of a specialty of this particular trio. Praise is due to both performers and sound engineers for taking full advantage of the intimacy afforded by the long-neglected piano version. In contrast to the outwardly projected Aspen performance, close microphone placement and a tight ambient space make this very much a chamber interpretation of FJFP, the first of its kind in the digital era.

Shostakovich once commented to his son Maxim that the Michelangelo Suite could very well stand as his Sixteenth Symphony. Written in 1974, this vocal setting of eleven poems parallels the format, seriousness of purpose, and number of movements found in his Fourteenth Symphony, save the details of instrumentation and the inclusion of a soprano in the latter work. However, Shostakovich's ultimate choice of the term 'suite' is appropriate given that the work lacks the inexorable forward drive that defines the symphonic form. If the songs collectively lack the cumulative tension of his final two vocal symphonies, the Thirteenth and Fourteenth, they offer pithy contemplations on a broad but no less lofty set of subjects that he took up in these symphonies and his other late-period cycles, Seven Romances on Poems of Alexander Blok and Six Songs on Poems of Marina Tsvetayeva. The universality and timelessness of the themes - art, love, death, immortality, morality - are reinforced by Shostakovich's choice of verses written half a millennium before in a tradition way outside Russian culture. The anticipated celebration of Michelangelo's 500th birthday in 1975 no doubt drew Shostakovich's attention to these verses. The idea may also have been inspired by the 1940 settings of Michelangelo sonnets by Benjamin Britten, to whom Shostakovich's Fourteenth Symphony is dedicated.

Musically the Michelangelo Suite is almost completely devoid of the dance forms, nervous rhythms, and catchy lyrical turns that we associate with Shostakovich. Its gestural lyricism may not be the most memorable, yet it represents word painting of the most deeply moving kind - one might call it Musorgskian, given its Russian language-based inflections. But as Fischer-Dieskau's piano version (Teldec 4509 97460-2; deleted) uniquely demonstrates, the Suite is just as effective when sung in the Italian language. The sombre, hymn-like progressions that appear throughout have also inspired an arrangement for organ and bass (Le Chant du Monde LDC778 1124; reviewed in DSCH No. 14). While the idea works quite well for a number of the sections, the arrangement's total lack of percussive edges has the effect of blunting its overall effectiveness.

There are three previous complete performances of the piano version: the solid and classical tones of Yevgeny Nesterenko accompanied by Yevgeny Shenderovich (Melodiya LP C10 06161-2; deleted); the richly blanketed, vibrato-laden voice of Fischer-Dieskau, in Italian, accompanied by Aribert Reimann; and one that I haven't heard, John Shirley-Quirk with Vladimir Ashkenazy on piano (Decca LP SXL 6849; deleted). The first two are strong performances, as is the one on the current disc, the differences among them amounting to mere nuances.

Fyodor Kuznetsov is no stranger to the Shostakovich repertoire and appears in all settings that call for bass soloist in Delos' five-volume series. His resonant bass is tinged with a metallic quality that imparts a nervous edge, well suited to the restless strains of the Michelangelo Suite. He captures the yearning tones of the opening song, Truth, as if reflecting the exasperation of unanswered prayers. He brings great expression to the soaring cantilena in the sixth song, Dante, in particular at the climactic utterance of the poet's name. He also effectively brings out the vulnerable moods in songs such as Love and Separation. In the sadly beautiful Night, Shostakovich's reflection on lost love that quotes Ustvolskaya's Clarinet Trio, Kuznetsov imparts sensitivity, though here Fischer-Dieskau manages to capture more of the dark melancholy embedded within. So does Nesterenko, who begins and ends this song in hushed tones and in between only sparingly raises his voice. Fischer-Dieskau takes noticeably broader tempi in the latter half of the cycle and as a result illuminates more of the dark corners that inhabit the songs To The Exiled, Night, and Death. If Kuznetsov lacks some of the expansive probity of Fischer-Dieskau or the solid footing of Nesterenko, he excels in holding a taut line and building fiercely ascending arcs. Listen to the explosive vehemence he musters in Wrath and his fiery penetration of the To The Exiled. It is this fire in the belly above all that makes his rendition of the Michelangelo Suite worth seeking out.

Pianist Yuri Serov again proves himself to be the ideal accompanist, providing keen reflexes and just enough personality to arouse interest without overshadowing the vocalists.

So concludes a historic set of releases, one that deserves the widest circulation and the most enduring shelf life. For most listeners, the Delos set is highly recommended. For Shostakovich devotees, it is a must.

Louis Blois
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