DSCH Journal

DSCH CD Review

Symphony No. 11 in G minor, opus 103, The Year 1905.
Vasily Petrenko, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra.
Naxos. 8.572082. DDD. TT: 57:37.
Recorded at Philharmonic hall, Liverpool, England, on 22 and 23 April 2008.

Naxos inaugurates a new Shostakovich symphonic cycle – its first in more than 15 years – with this release of the Eleventh Symphony performed by the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic under the baton of Vasily Petrenko. The conductor’s name is bound to turn heads. Petrenko, a relative newcomer to the West, is neither a household name nor a debutant. He has toured internationally and has been the principal conductor of the Royal Liverpool Orchestra since September 2006. In the 1990s he held leading posts in St Petersburg, the city where he was raised and educated, and has amassed a small but respectable discography that includes Shostakovich’s Gamblers and Rothschild’s Violin, both on Avie 2121, released in 2007 (reviewed in DSCH No. 30). In 2007 he was named in the Gramophone as Young Artist of the Year.

The label’s previous Shostakovich survey, issued in 1992–1993, featured Ladislav Slovak and the Czech PO of Bratislava, who were capable of delivering moments of stunning intensity to this repertoire. Yet the generally slow-moving interpretations and less than enthusiastic reviews left a lingering gap in the Naxos catalogue (Slovak’s instalment of the Fourteenth Symphony is now and again cited as a high water mark).

Curiously overlooked was Theodore Kuchar, Naxos’s leading on-board interpreter of Soviet/Russian repertoire, whose discography includes a complete and rather handsome set of Prokofiev symphonies.

One thing that can be said about Petrenko: he takes the podium by storm. That is clearly evident from the very first bars of the Shostakovich Eleventh. In the opening movement he opts for a Palace Square on the brink of explosion. The brisk pace may sacrifice some of the weight and hypnotic aura found in other interpretations. Yet the restrained whispers of the string tremolos nevertheless invoke a fittingly oppressive pre-Revolutionary landscape. Critical to the air of coiled fury in this interpretation are the all-important instrumental solos. They make all the difference in the world, as past recordings have shown. When insufficient attention is given to them, as we find in the Järvi, Lazarev, and Schwarz editions, the entire movement suffers. In Mravinsky’s hands, the solos rise up stunningly with a passion that elicits the very soul of the Revolutionary spirit. In the DePriest/Helsinki rendition (Delos DE 3080) one discerns what might be called a valorous yearning. Berglund’s solos (EMI CDS7 47790-8) invoke a sublime spectrum of pride, caution, rage, hope, suffering. Petrenko finds yet a different complexion.

In his version the ardently sustained notes of the muted solo trumpet and French horn, and later in the boldly assertive flute duets, charge the air with restless tones of defiance. Even the timpani, as in no other performance I’ve heard, rumble like beasts rattling their cages – a fitting metaphor for the tone and temper of Petrenko’s Palace Square. The movement’s central outburst, marked with strong cross-rhythms of muted brass and percussion, erupts with exceptional ferocity. Here again, in the movement’s defining moment, the glacial scrim of tremolos is peeled back to reveal a squall of raging passions churning just beneath the surface.

n but few performances – the outstanding version of the Eleventh by Herbert Kegel and the Leipzig PO (Weitbuck SSS0039-2) is brought to mind – do we find such pointed emphasis placed on the movement’s spine-chilling extremes.

It takes a few pages for the following January 9th movement to muster steam, yet the storm that soon gathers carries the day. Some may find Petrenko’s predilection for sharp accents and surging crescendi a little melodramatic, while others will find the flashes of spontaneity thrilling. For their fine ensemble playing the Liverpool Orchestra deserve honorary membership in the Russian Revolutionary Guard, with special mention for the brass and percussion. When the stillness is shattered by the machine-gun cracks of the snare drum, Petrenko picks up the tempo with a cardiac jolt and proceeds with steadily driving momentum. The Liverpudlians deliver a sustained level of excitement throughout with thunderously roaring sonics. Listeners will rejoice at the natural spacious sound found on this recording. It’s a genuine thrill to be able to follow the panting fugue subject along a great panoramic arc around the podium as it is handed from one instrumental group to the next. One notable drawback in the sound department, however, occurs at the climactic point. Here one will find a less than ideal reproduction of the timpani’s major-minor tattoo, an essential entry, if there ever were one, as it tops off one of the symphony’s dramatic plateaus. Some of the thrill of the moment is thus shed in a performance that otherwise captures the score’s blistering agitation. The collaboration between conductor and sound engineer in this key passage has nowhere been more perfectly matched than in the classic Kyrill Kondrashin recording (Melodiya CD 74321 19843-2). There, the percussion section rings in with the utmost clarity, with what sounds like a separate microphone/audio channel dedicated to each of the participating instruments. The result is a sound image that may be somewhat contrived, yet at the same time it is one that captures the excitement of the moment in every detail.

In the In Memoriam movement, Petrenko shows us that the outer sections, based on the folksong You Fell as Victims, do not necessarily go hand-in-hand with the weighted sorrow preferred by other conductors. He instead summons a poetry of strolling motion and, one might say, ephemerality (though some may hear it as detachment), as if to commemorate events in the past tense. It is a strategy of contrast that has never been tried in exactly the same way: the full release of emotions, now somewhat distant and subdued, is reserved for the brawny central section. At the onset of the B section, Petrenko markedly slows the pace, as if to stand music and listener at attention. The moment seized, he builds with beautifully escalating dynamics, withholding the most forceful volume until the shattering peak passage. And then it arrives, the Bare Your Heads motto theme, in deep heaving breaths, and with such monumental agonising that it will unstop the driest of tear ducts. The return to the quietly strolling mood of the first section closes the movement with dignified understatement.

Petrenko’s fondness for sharp accents yields especially vigorous results in the finale. The tempo is brisk, the energy never flags, the mood is celebratory with a vengeance. Petrenko suspends the barely held back enthusiasm to give a wide berth to the finely delivered English horn solo. Notably this is a performance in which the chimes are allowed to resonate, here for approximately 18 seconds, beyond the score’s final bars. Purists will gawk. Yet given the symbolism of the gesture as an enduring reminder of the struggle for freedom, and given that a number of conductors (e.g., Berglund, Stokowski, Rostropovich twice) have already taken the liberty, the lingering chime tones sound as right as rain. They provide a gratifying finish to this energetic and heartfelt performance of the Eleventh. My complaint, however, again is with the otherwise admirable engineering. In the final passages the chimes are unfortunately reduced to ornamental status as their image plays hide and seek with the rest of the orchestra. We are deprived of hearing even a single clear utterance of the instrument’s insistently repeating major-minor tattoo. It seems at cross-purposes to accord the chimes such poetic prominence in the finale’s aftermath while half burying their equally if not more important motto theme in the very preceding pages.

Quibbles aside, Petrenko emerges as a fresh voice in the interpretation of this repertoire. Here we have an exciting rendition of the Shostakovich Eleventh and a promising first instalment of the complete cycle.

Louis Blois
Top

 

DSCH Journal © all rights reserved