I would not be in the least bit surprised if the orchestrated Michelangelo Suite turns out to be the next under-exploited Shostakovich work to receive the massed attention of record companies. In scale, mood and import, this piece is in the league of the vocal symphonies Nos. 13 and 14, and not having it in one's collection is a serious omission. In 1974, Shostakovich took advantage of the coincidence of Michelangelo's upcoming 500th birthday to set, for bass and piano, poems by the Tuscan polymath dealing with personally resonant themes: love (transient or lost), alienation, mortality. His orchestration of the same year is no less evocative for its spartan means, and is valedictory throughout. There is a symphonic unity to the eleven short segments, made explicit by the restatement, verbatim, of the opening theme from the bitter first movement, Truth, in the penultimate poem, Death (the titles are Shostakovich's).

Michail Jurowski and Anatoli Kotscherga have the formidable competition in opus 145a of Vladimir Ashkenazy and no less than Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau (coupled with the Captain Lebyadkin Verses; Decca/London 433 319-2). But make no mistake, the Capriccio artists are by no means poor cousins. The Ukrainian Kotscherga, a veteran of the Kiev opera house and la Scala, with a busy international concert schedule, is a master of his instrument. He has a coarser grain to his voice than does Fischer-Dieskau, and to my ears this edginess better suits the instability of the music. In Morning, a salacious meditation on earthly pleasures, Kotscherga's pointed articulation reveals rhythms that Fischer-Dieskau smudges. Consistently, Fischer-Dieskau is the more operatic of the two, Kotscherga the more declamatory.

Jurowski is not as long-winded as Ashkenazy. He is less concerned with epic gestures than with portraying the glance backwards at personal terrors and regrets. The Cologne orchestra sound to be evenly matched with the Radio-Symphonie-Orchester Berlin on Decca, marginally less smooth but correspondingly more serrated, which suits Jurowski's approach.

Each of these versions is internally consistent, with conductor, orchestra and bass performing with common purpose. Even the recordings reflect the interpretive differences, Capriccio's well-focussed acoustic sounding less plush than Decca's. Listen to the sum effect in Creativity, in which Michelangelo muses on the relationship of the sculptor to God as creator, ending with:

"The higher the arm is raised above the anvil,
the heavier the blow:
now it is raised above me to the skies;

I stiffen in the block of stone
while God the craftsman - only He! -
hesitates to wield the hammerblow."

Shostakovich's orchestration is shot through with shrill cries and skeletal percussion effects, which suggest that someone less than supernatural - but more immediately fearful - has his hand on the hammer. On Decca, this movement has a grandness missing from the Capriccio account, whereas Jurowski's team admits more of a double meaning to the atheist Shostakovich's setting. As splendid as the Decca account is, the new Capriccio performance is more idiomatic and, I imagine, closer to Shostakovich's intent.

Although Shostakovich composed the Pushkin Romances (again, originally for bass and piano) four decades before the Michelangelo Verses, and these are but four brief movements, they are kindred in theme. Written a year after the 1936 Pravda attacks on Lady Macbeth and Limpid Stream, they make what at first seems a suicidal choice of texts to set; the first poem, Rebirth (translated here as Regeneration), opens with:

"An artist-barbarian with his idle brush
blackens a picture painted by a genius,
and senselessly sketches over it
his own illicit drawing."

Wisely, the piece was not performed until 1940, though Gerard McBurney has pointed out that the march theme from the finale of the Fifth Symphony of 1937 derives from the four notes which underline "An artist-barbarian".

Shostakovich's own orchestration of the Romances drops the fourth poem, Stanzas, leaving the defiant Rebirth, the laconic A jealous maiden, sobbing bitterly, and the ominous Premonition ("envious Fortune threatens me/once more with misfortune.../Shall I continue to scorn Fate?"). The instrumentation is light, and nowhere approaches the gloominess of the Michelangelo score. The performers face little difficulty, and bass Anatoli Babykin is sympathetic, albeit a trifle chesty.

The Six Romances on words by Japanese poets are earlier still, their composition split between 1928 and '32. Exclusively concerned with love, this opus is the creation of a young, romantic soul, and thirty-nine-year-old tenor Vladimir Kazatchouk makes an ardent suitor. The orchestra's alternately tender and feverish playing emphasizes similarities with some of the more intimate passages of Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District, which clearly mines the present work.

Although it would be competitive at full price, this is a mid-price disc. Moreover, the English translations in the booklet are not the Pythonesque oddities of past Capriccio releases. One major disappointment is that Russian librettos are not provided along with the trilingual translations. Their inclusion should be considered mandatory in any production of Russian vocal music. This complaint aside, those who have neglected Shostakovich's vocal output will find this a valuable introduction, and it will be a desirable addition to the libraries of those who already know the works. Very strongly recommended.

W. Mark Roberts
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