Cello Concerto No. 2 in G major, opus 126[a]; Prokofiev: Symphony-Concerto[b].
Gerard Schwarz, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, Lynn Harrell (cello).
Avie AV 2090. DDD. TT 72:22.
Recorded live at Philharmonic Hall, Liverpool, England, 27 and 28 May[a], 25 and 26 May 2005[b].

Gerard Schwarz's ventures into the Shostakovich repertoire are so few and far between that his most worthy efforts may have gone unnoticed. As Music Director of the Seattle Symphony Orchestra for more than two decades, Schwarz has amassed a recording legacy highlighted by an acclaimed series of symphonic works by contemporary American composers. His association with other orchestras, such as the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, which he has directed since 2001, has brought him similar accolades.

Schwarz's blockbuster recording of Shostakovich's Execution of Stepan Razin, recently released on Naxos (8.557812; reviewed in DSCH No. 25), shows the kind of stuff his musicality is made of: bedrock stability, a durable set of tempi that avoids exaggeration, and at its best, a deeply anchored hold on the music that captures the essence of Shostakovich's thorny, emotionally charged universe. All of this flows apparently unforced from Schwarz's baton with admirable spontaneity. Despite bass-baritone Charles Robert Austin's lacking the guttural resonance that comes easier to native Russian singers, the Seattle Orchestra and Chorus more than compensate with a mighty performance that delivers the unflagging drama found in the best interpretations. The same album supplies a superior rendering of Shostakovich's October tone poem, which gives the versions of Järvi (Deutsche Grammophon 459 415-2) and Ashkenazy (Decca 475 7431) a run for their money. These favourable impressions led me to track down the rest of the Shostakovich works in the Schwarz discography.

I was equally impressed by Schwarz's rendition of Shostakovich's Sixth Symphony (Artek AR-0017-2, released 2004). Like the highly acclaimed Järvi version (Chandos CHAN 8411), it makes its way through the grandly meandering Largo with uncommon poignancy. Järvi's sonic spaciousness favours a more distant evocation, whereas Schwarz, exploiting the clarity and warmth of Seattle's Benaroya Hall, focuses more on individual solos and the movement's contours of tension and relaxation. Ensemble work shines throughout. The soloists in the Largo are especially concerned with achieving the sense of mystical intensity. In the subsequent movements the Seattle Symphony again get to display their outstanding sectional playing; brass and percussion merit special mention.

In the First Violin Concerto, with which the Sixth Symphony is paired, again Schwarz's choice of soloist, as in the Stepan Razin cantata, is not entirely satisfactory. Violinist Elmar Oliveira's infallible intonation and beautifully flowing lyricism work especially well in his moving account of the third movement Passacaglia, which soars to lofty heights. Yet, in the more weighty opening movement, more digging is required to reach the music's troubled demons. Likewise in the emotionally charged Scherzo, Oliveira's polished tones might have contained more grit. Though the Seattle musicians provide sturdy support, the whole effort relies somewhat too heavily upon the soloist.

Despite their fine musicianship and their recording's well-honed acoustics, Schwarz and the Seattle SO do not quite succeed in their interpretation of the Eleventh Symphony (Koch-Schwann 3-7414-2, released 1997; deleted), the result, I imagine, of a shortage of rehearsal time. The all-important instrumental solos in the opening movement fall short of achieving the spirit of proud defiance found in the best performances, such as those of Ashkenazy (Decca 448 179-2; deleted), Berglund (EMI 7243 5 73839 2 9; deleted), Kondrashin (Aulos AMC2-043-1-10), Mravinsky (Revelation RV 10091; reviewed in DSCH No. 9; deleted), and Rostropovich's slow-boiling LSO version (LSO Live LSO0030; reviewed in DSCH No. 18). The result is music that suffocates from too much reverence. While there's no shortage of passion in the January 9th movement, I would have preferred less spontaneity and more structure in order to keep its climactic sections in better proportion. It is only in the third movement, In memoriam, that the Seattle players at last display the power and depth required. With slow dignified tempi, they build to a radiant central climax.

It still amazes me that the first commercial recording of Shostakovich's 1966 Cello Concerto No. 2 had to wait until the 1980s, the last of his concerti to make its way to disc. The unofficial honour of its premiere recording goes to a deliberately mislabelled Aries LP, a bootleg issued in the 1970s with Rostropovich, the work's dedicatee, as soloist and Jean Martinon leading the Chicago SO. As in the half dozen other performances with Rostropovich and various conductors—most dating from the late 1960s and not made available until the 1990s—the solo part is handled with inimitable authority and confidence. Rostropovich's well-honed interpretation with Seji Ozawa and the Boston SO is best known in the West (Deutsche Grammophon 439 481-2; deleted). His "live concert" partnerships with Svetlanov (Russian Disc RD CD 11 109; deleted), Rozhdestvensky (Intaglio INCD 7251; deleted) and David Oistrakh (Classical Treasures CT-10037; reviewed in DSCH No. 17), even with their occasional coordination problems between soloist and orchestra, capture the unique high-tension performance styles of the Soviet era. Maxim Shostakovich's two recordings of the work, dating from the 1980s, with soloists Valentin Feigin (Moscow SO, Melodiya LP: C10 13769-70; deleted) and Heinrich Schiff (Bavarian RSO, Philips 475 7575) yield particularly fine results.

The Second Cello Concerto enjoyed a boom of recordings after 1990. Natalia Gutman's hard-edged renderings, one with Yuri Temirkanov and the Royal PO (RCA RD 87918; deleted) and the other an earlier, even more driven version with Dmitri Kitaenko and the Moscow PO (Live Classics LCL 202, reviewed in DSCH No. 15), are consistent with the assertive style of interpretation as exemplified by Rostropovich. Some critics find the version with cellist Frans Helmerson and the Russian State SO under Valeri Polyanksy (Chandos CHAN 9585, reviewed in DSCH No. 10; deleted; reissued as CHAN 10040X) on the cool side, but its tight tempi and take-charge address confer upon it an appealing clarity of purpose. Mischa Maisky with Tilson Thomas and the LSO (DG 445 821-2) take a more deliberate approach that at times gets caught up in details, but never so much as Kyrill Rodin's floundering version with Konstantin Krimets and the Russian PO (Arte Nova ANO 496880), which gropes in vain for a convincing point of view.

The Second Cello Concerto differs notably from its predecessor in its untraditional layout of movements and in its shadowy content typical of Shostakovich's later style. Though less popular than the First Concerto, it is arguably the greater work in terms of construction. Marked by complex emotional detours, the formal layout of the Second is conceived broadly and simply as a vast monolithic wedge of increasing tension. After an embolismic bottling of emotion in the first movement and an escalation toward a withheld climax in the second, revolving around the folk song Bublichki, everything collapses into the explosively tragic return of the Bublichki theme in the finale. Here Shostakovich condenses all the work's tragic energy into a single moment of release ingeniously deferred to the very last bars. The acknowledgement of this basic floorplan is key to a successful performance. Interpreters must not only make sense of the concerto's unusually cryptic material, even by Shostakovian standards, but at the same time respond to its tightly knit formal elements. In many performances these two variables either compete with each other for pre-eminence or remain incompletely assimilated.

Schwarz's hit and miss track record in Shostakovich would not seem to bode well for the Second Concerto's labyrinthine intrigues. However I'm happy to report that he joins cellist Lynn Harrell in what turns out to be a partnership of remarkable compatibility. Harrell steps beyond the music's shroud of mystery with a disarming level of intimacy. Rather than the aggressive wrangling with the work's conflicts found in the Russian performances, Harrell offers a more subtle set of responses. Throughout he conveys vulnerability mixed with wonder and a refreshing, entirely original openness. His interiorised approach is more closely allied to Western performances such as those of Truls Mørk (with the London PO/Jansons; Virgin Classics 4820192) and Torleif Thedéen (with the Malmö SO/DePriest; BIS CD 626). Though his tone lacks the weight and forward projection found in these accounts, his strength lies in the humanity he brings to this music and to his uncanny ability to carve a wealth of detail into each phrase.

In Harrell's hands the falling semitones that open the concerto sink back, moaning and reluctant, a despondent stirring of troubled waters. From this world-weary torpor he gradually leads the solo part outward with a beautifully shaped line, seizing upon wonderful moments of dramatic awakening in the ascent toward the first crest of the exposition. Here he brings out by turns, the probing, the pathos, the pleading tones; and then returns, by an equally nuanced descent, to the resigned whispers of the opening bars.

In this opening paragraph, then, Harrell establishes a stirring rapport with the listener. In the more rhythmic second thematic group, as in the faster passages elsewhere in the concerto, Harrell prefers short, light bowings that are no doubt his way of micromanaging the contour of each phrase. At the movement's stark culmination, in between the bass drum's thunderous pounces, Harrell's explosive defiance is felt in the angry traipses of his pizzicato chords and in the anguished exhortations of the most wrenching double-stopped howlings into the wind.

The staccato notes with which the solo cello opens the second movement also take on a unique personality. The obliquely receding tones that Harrell produces in these otherwise unassuming phrases parallel his entering gestures in the first movement. Once again he seems to anticipate with trepidation the turbulence ahead. And indeed he heads directly for the troubled undercurrents of this deceptively giddy scherzo. The long-wired glissandi, portrayed like stretched candy by Rostropovich and especially Thedéen, are in Harrell's hands more like bracing skids of the soul. While some of the irony of the proceedings is lost, Harrell compensates with superb manoeuvring through the mercurial shifts of mood and the increasingly strained utterances of the Bublichki theme—all this against a backdrop of violent timpani punctuation and hectoring woodwind skirls. Schwarz's rhythmic stability, supported by the fine musicianship of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, brings out a wealth of detail. Conductor and soloist are in marvellously pulsed unison as they ratchet up the tension and commandeer the movement toward its bizarre anticlimactic cul de sac. The elephantine fanfares that suddenly appear, Shostakovich's masterstroke of misdirection, announce their arrival with confounding pomposity.

The final rondo is comprised of an even more bewildering chessboard of incongruities. Schwarz and Harrell shift from one vignette to the next without batting an eyelash: the romantic windowpane of melancholic reverie; the sweet cadential phrase tethered to a trill; the hollowed-out march theme that follows the restatements of the fanfare motif; and so forth. At the same time they never lose sight of the substrate of tension that eventually erupts in volcanic fury.

A few reservations: I found Harrell's sudden acceleration in tempo a little disruptive in the tortured solo cadenza leading to the climax. It is a surge that, while seemingly spontaneous, interrupts the section's larger rhythmic framework. On the conductor's side, I wish Schwarz had taken more of a ritardando, per Shostakovich's instructions in the score, in the poignant breath that separates the two-part utterance of the final climax. The slight clipping takes some of the wind out of his otherwise powerful culmination. Conductor and soloist bring the work to its haunting conclusion. Some cellists, notably Rostropovich, like to emphasize the slight hook at the end of the final sustained note. Harrell barely raises the voice of his instrument at this final moment, mirroring the soft-spoken tones with which he begins the previous two movements.

The same strength and intelligence is brought to Prokofiev's extroverted Symphony-Concerto. One will find slightly more meaty cello tones in the recording with Rostropovich and Rozhdestvensky leading the USSR State SO (Revelation RV 10102; deleted). Yet once again, Harrell demonstrates his ability to personalise while holding the line in another beautifully crafted performance.

Louis Blois
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