DSCH Journal

DSCH CD Review

	Northern Flowers

Symphony No. 5, opus 47; Symphony No. 9, opus 70.
Vasily Petrenko, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra.
NAXOS 8.572167. DDD. TT 75:07.
Recorded at Philharmonic Hall, Liverpool 7-8 July 2008.

Symphony No. 9, opus 70; Russian River, opus 66[a]; Native Leningrad, opus 63[b]
Alexander Titov, St Petersburg State Academic Symphony Orchestra, Chamber Choir of Smolny Cathedral[a, b], Boris Stepanov (tenor)[b], Andrei Slavney (baritone)[b].
Northern Flowers NF/PMA 9976. DDD. TT: 49:49
Recorded at St. Catherine’s Lutheran Church, St. Petersburg, March 4-6, 2009

The second instalment of Vasily Petrenko’s complete Shostakovich symphonic cycle on Naxos, plus two world-premiere recordings on Northern Flowers, should do well to warm the hearts of devotees this season. Each release is graced with a performance of the Ninth Symphony, one that shines and one that sparkles.

Petrenko and the Royal Liverpool PO launched their survey with the unorthodox choice of the mighty Eleventh Symphony, reviewed in DSCH Journal No. 31. They now continue on more familiar ground with the Fifth and Ninth Symphonies. Petrenko’s Eleventh reveals a conductor deeply in touch with the volatile core of Shostakovich’s music and in command of its architecture. In the oft-performed Fifth, arguably the standard-bearer of the canon, Petrenko delivers a performance marked by passionate determination. Every page of this emotionally charged work is probed in scrupulous detail, revealing new insights and, especially in the finale, unavoidable political undercurrents.

There is something of the Wigglesworth approach in Petrenko’s broad tempi and wide-ranging dynamics. Yet here the music seems to be experienced by the conductor on the most intimate level. Petrenko’s interpretation is elegantly subjective and unabashedly romanticised. As we find in the slower movements of his rendition of the Eleventh Symphony, Petrenko tends to tighten the noose around peak moments by holding back dynamic levels in the surrounding valleys and then clasping those moments for dear life. The same propensities are found in this performance. The themes of the first movement exposition are muted to the point of suggesting a personal confession to God himself. Among these, the Carmen theme, with a hint of portamento, is whispered as if it were the tender love-song from which it was derived. Fortifying these exquisitely tender passages are the peaks, which rally and shimmer with the radiance of Anton Bruckner’s musical epiphanies. Petrenko somehow manages to accomplish the nearly impossible feat of revelling in one indulgence after another while at the same time laying a foundation of formal solidity. The similar extravagances of Rostropovich’s reading with the LSO seem operatic by comparison.

In the development section Petrenko steps up to pace by way of a well-drawn accelerando. The brassy march variant of the first theme, the moment of blazing contradiction in the midst of the mêlée, sneers with such vehemence that one almost hears it as Shostakovich’s musical reply to the notorious personal assaults of the time. The subsequent climactic utterance is so strappingly expansive that some may find it a bit over the top. Yet Petrenko has earned this full-scale indulgence, as he delivers the passage as if it were the revelation of a lifetime. And after all, isn’t that the point of the music?

Winds and brass come on strong in the rhythmically accentuated Scherzo, where pizzicati get plenty of pluck, and the iambically inflected waltz cavorts with curiously heavy-footed grace. The rhetoric of irony is spotlighted in the central violin solo, which performs its little dance as if innocently oblivious of its portentous surroundings.

Petrenko’s interpretation of the Largo may have taken a cue from Richard Taruskin’s description of the movement as being “saturated with… the ‘imagery’ of leave-taking and of funerals”. Accordingly, the movement is stretched to dirge-like limits, overwhelmed with grief, nearly stilled to silence, delivered as if one’s dearest companion were being eulogised. The solo passages – the duet for flutes, the vibrato-laden oboe solo – share the same agonising intimacy. Petrenko’s peaks more than add heat to the already white-hot furnace of the movement: here they go so far as to redefine the terrain. The Largo harbours not one but two emotional centres, the first being the mighty crescendo in the strings early in the movement (fig. 81) that follows the section for solo flutes and harp. Petrenko elevates this crescendo to such a majestically eruptive exorcism of the soul that it overshadows the subsequent xylophone-adorned climax, ostensibly the movement’s emotional centre. While that latter crowning point is given its Olympian due, the experience of the earlier climax lingers as the more penetrating catharsis. The air of infinite sorrow surrounding the peaks, especially in the post-climactic pages, provides a poignantly haunting backdrop for what is perhaps the most profoundly moving Largo on disc.
If political edges are to be found lurking in the previous three movements, Petrenko makes their presence all too apparent in the finale. Here is the dissident point of view taken to its extreme, the ultimate embodiment of ‘forced rejoicing’, the phrase used to describe this movement by the Shostakovich of Testimony and expounded upon in Ian MacDonald’s path-breaking book The New Shostakovich. What may be heard as subtext in other interpretations comes boiling to the surface from the very opening measures. The timpani figure sounds less like a release of exuberant energy and more like a fit of exploding temper; and the pounding rhythms of the accompanying march theme are accentuated just a little too violently for comfort. When the music moves on to the more relaxed lyrical material, Petrenko shuns the usual valedictory tone in favour of a strained, icy, even shrill timbre in the strings. Taking liberties with the score’s dynamic markings, he then subjects these flowing themes to a gradual yet unremitting diminuendo so that upon reaching their last and most moving variant, the music is barely audible – signifying, perhaps, the fading from view of all that is good and beautiful. The coda that immediately follows is just as emblematic of political content. It plods cumbersomely, agonisingly, as a monstrous mockery of itself. The brass groan the four-note toreador theme in timbres that sound like intentionally soured microtonal pitches, a most extraordinary manifestation of bitter reluctance. The final strokes on timpani and bass drum drive the point home with murderous brutality. Anyone not clued in to the political background of this enigmatic coda from hell might well be perplexed by the aural assault.

Yet those in the know will understand. Suffice to say that if Ian MacDonald were alive today he well might rejoice upon hearing it – as vindication of his dissident vision of Shostakovich’s music. And if Shostakovich himself were alive to hear it, he might, and then again he might not, have twitched his ear once or twice and remarked: “Finally, someone got it right. “

Whether or not one buys this finale as Petrenko construes it, it makes a stunning impact. It forms a fitting capstone to a performance of the Fifth that will have you sitting on the edge of your seat from the first to the very last bars. Don’t miss it.

The premiere recordings of two Shostakovich rarities, Russian River and Native Leningrad, paired with a glittering performance of the Ninth Symphony, are a highlight of a distinguished series of CDs from Northern Flowers, entitled “Wartime Music: 1941-1945”. The series includes a remarkable roster of first-time recordings of major works by the prominent Soviet composers of the day: Lev Knipper, Valeri Gavrilin, Gavriil Popov, Revol Bunin, and Mieczyslaw Weinberg. The Weinberg disc merits notice for its haunting rendition of his 1948 Cello Concerto (previously recorded on Melodiya), and the premiere recording of his First Symphony from 1942, the work with which Weinberg introduced himself to a much-impressed Shostakovich. With their musical and historical payload, the programmes document the tone and temper of a country wracked by the ordeal of the Great Patriotic War.

The two suites recorded on this disc reflect the call of duty on Shostakovich, as responses to commissions from the NKVD Song and Dance Ensemble. Both are scored for the fairly large forces of orchestra, chorus, and soloists; each lasts less than a quarter of an hour; and each contains a purely instrumental scherzo of original material that breaks away from the prevailing patriotic character.

The incidental music to the patriotic spectacle Native Country, written in 1942, takes the form of the suite that comprises Shostakovich’s Native Leningrad. The dedication inscribed in the score, “Written as a tribute to the courage of the citizens of Leningrad”, provides a heads up as to musical content. The opening Overture is built around the choral settings of two Revolutionary folksongs that follow each other in developmental fashion: Boldly, Friends, On We March, familiar to listeners from its subsequent use in the finale of the Eleventh Symphony, and The Warsaw March. The chest-thumping exchanges of orchestra and chorus build toward a final high note. The tenor solo takes centre stage in the final Ode for Leningrad, and in the Song of October Victory, with its lively alternation between triple and duple meter. Both numbers are based on original tunes that are as musically straightforward as their patriotic texts suggest (e.g., from the October Victory song, “Our brave boys of Petrograd/ Walk a new bold way now/ Cheer up, be happy, belle/ The old world has kicked the bucket”). The orchestral third movement, Dance of Youth, scampers its own way with a sequence of fast and fidgety thematic transitions that recaptures the madcap mirth and tuneful inventiveness of earlier Shostakovich scores such as Age of Gold.

Shostakovich’s music for the stage spectacle Russian River (which is also listed under the titles The Great River and The Volga), is likewise cast in a heroic vein. The original tune that Shostakovich would use sixteen years later as the basis for his patriotic miniature Novorossiisk Chimes (1960) crowns the final two movements in rousing displays of solemnity, struggle, and celebration. They are preceded by the blustery march tune of the first movement that lasts all of fifteen seconds; and a little orchestral gem entitled Football, whose quick thematic passes and agile manoeuvres kick up a lively musical depiction of the game as only Shostakovich can.

Alexander Titov commands the multiple forces with no shortage of vitality. For a conductor whose 70-plus CD discography thus far has avoided Shostakovich, he turns in one of the most effervescent and politically savvy versions of the Ninth Symphony on record. Titov evidently enjoys a particular affinity with the music as he misses no opportunity to bring out the work’s joviality and sundry musical jokes. As in the suites, the St Petersburg SO boasts excellent ensemble playing, here marked by sharp accents and exceptionally high spirits. The strings in the opening Allegro skip euphorically; the woodwinds, especially the piccolo figures, chirp gleefully. The last note of the trombone’s repeated cadential figure derisively lingers after each statement; this, as if to hold the musical jab in Stalin’s side as long as possible. Compare Petrenko’s more stately exposition, with its more combative jabs in the trombone cadences, and aggressive percussive energy. His is a no-nonsense Allegro where the bouncing timpani figure that follows each cadence explodes, not so much with jolly derision as with resolute vengeance. Petrenko’s percussive determination leads to a development section that is raised to more ominous heights, though it misses the irrepressible buoyancy that gives Titov’s reading its unique lustre.

Both Titov and Petrenko get directly under the skin of the grey but clear-eyed Moderato. Titov manoeuvres through this eerie terrain with circumspection; Petrenko, taking a broader pace, elicits more sinister sonorities and a mournful mood of vigilance, the chromatically rising footsteps arriving at their peaks in a more darkly unsettled fashion.

The Spanish-inflected trumpet solo that crowns the Presto is an overt flashback to similar trumpet-as-toreador moments in the Seventh and Eighth Symphonies, and comprises one of the connective tissues of Shostakovich’s wartime trilogy of symphonies. It can also be heard as a mockery of militaristic hubris, underscoring the anti-tribute to Stalin’s war victory that the Ninth so trenchantly represents. Nowhere is the travesty of the moment made more biting than in the Titov performance where the trumpeter, in a wonderfully expressive delivery of his keynote solo, manages to play as if he is guffawing through his teeth. It is a sound bite that summarily encapsulates Titov’s wickedly free-spirited rendition, one that fully embraces Shostakovich’s evident intentions in this work of leaving deep teeth marks on Stalin’s glorified self-image. Petrenko adopts a different approach as he leads with demonic velocity, making his point with more thunderous punctuation marks and a punchier trumpet solo.

In the following Largo Titov raises the level of bravado by concluding each of the blustery brass declarations with a cymbal crash as grand and mighty as they come, a fitting flourish for these symbolic pronouncements of the Great Leader and Teacher. In the bassoon solos interspersed between each pronouncement, Petrenko’s bassoonist evokes a mood of icy suspicion in contrast to Titov’s self-effacing warmth – a matter of interpretation, perhaps, of humanity stilled as opposed to humanity humbled in the face of oppression. Each provides a set of well-cast contrasts in the implied repartee in this movement, à la Goldenberg & Schmuyle, between the high-and-mighty and the low-and-humble.

In the final Allegretto Petrenko offers a more sinister reading than the consistently tongue-in-cheek Titov. Each conductor builds toward the bait-and-switch non-climax in thrilling swoops of escalating tension. Petrenko accords the section a slightly higher platform by taking an expansive ritardando in the last winding gesture, then accelerating straight through the anti-peak like a Thunderbird racing through hell.

The close microphone placement in the Titov recording, handsomely spotlighting each individual instrument, adds to the lustre of his recording. Mr Titov is enthusiastically requested to serve up another Shostakovich helping.

Louis Blois
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