Symphony No.12 in D minor, Op. 112; Cello Concerto No. 2 in G major, Op. 126[a].
Valeri Polyansky, Russian State Symphony Orchestra, Frans Helmerson (cello)[a].
Chandos CHAN 9585. DDD. TT: 75:25
Recorded March 1996, Moscow.

This Chandos release has the distinction of coupling the two most enigmatic orchestral works in the Shostakovich canon: the Twelfth Symphony and the Second Cello Concerto. Written only five years apart from one other (1961 and 1966), each raises many perplexing questions while occupying vastly different worlds of creativity. In the concerto, a pervasive aura of mystery is invoked as nowhere else in the Shostakovich canon to achieve a profound and haunting beauty. The Symphony, on the other hand, is baffling for opposite reasons: its utter absence of vision. Each work presents its own set of interpretive challenges, undertaken here by Valeri Polyansky in his ongoing survey of the composer's orchestral music.

The Second Cello Concerto marks a major sea change in Shostakovich's music. Written during a year of setbacks in the composer's health, its chamber-like instrumentation and darker, more inwardly turned character are two of the many features that have caused some to call it the inaugurating work of the final period. As the shadowy cousin of the First Cello Concerto, it lacks the obviously ingratiating qualities that have assured the earlier work's enduring popularity, such as the robust themes, extended cadenza, and romantic slow movement. Its slow-fast-slow arrangement of movements also sets it apart from its predecessor.

The intriguing aspects of the Second Cello Concerto instead lie in its rich tapestry of detail. Underlying its strange lyrical beauty, the work boasts a cohesive level of thematic and intervallic organization that one is more likely to find in the composer's string quartets. Another level of organization is found in its long-range dramatic plan. There is but one principal climax in the entire work that takes place near its final pages (this attribute alone is unique in the Shostakovich canon, though there are similarities to the Fourth Symphony), a tragic moment of revelation for which everything preceding it is an extended preparation. The path to this tumultuous eruption takes place through a broadly arched, yet bewilderingly digressive accumulation of tension by way of a brooding Largo, a comic-turned-manic Scherzo, and a most unorthodox finale. The final movement is a rondo whose series of episodic detours forms one of the most confounding and tantalizing musical rebuses of the century: a bizarre fanfare, a string of cantilena themes, a mechanical dance. The listener is left to ponder how these disquietingly self-contained and contrasting parts relate to each other and in their midst, to the singular climax which passionately binds them together. The interpreters of the work must do the same as well as decide how to negotiate these episodes in order to maximize their strange and powerful impact.

I have found that performances of the opening Largo tend to be more uniformly successful than those of the final two movements. This is due to the monolithically brooding, but by no means straightforward, nature of the movement whose sonata subjects engage in a mutually probing rather than conflicting dialogue with each other. The more difficult interpretive challenges lie in the more actively conflicted music in the remainder of the concerto. The cellist, for example, must be able to understand and respond to the contradictory layers of emotion in these movements and in doing so, maintain the considerable level of inner tension that the music demands. More important and perhaps difficult is the challenge to soloist and conductor of being able to sustain, through its myriad episodes, the sense of inevitability that is so much a part of the work's cumulative impact.

Judging from the merits of existing recordings, this also implies certain minimum tempo requirements. In two of the longest performances on record (Mariss Jansons/London Philharmonic on Virgin Classics CDC 5 451 45 2 and Tilson Thomas/London Symphony Orchestra on Deutsche Grammophon DG 445 821-2), soloists Truls Mørk and Mischa Maisky give wonderfully expansive readings of the Largo, yet the tone of each soloist is a shade too complacent to properly engage the music of the final two movements. The Virgin Classics is a disc otherwise worth pointing out for two reasons, the particularly good performances from the orchestra that Jansons elicits (listen to the expressive flair of the French Horn fanfares in the third movement), and the exemplary clarity of the recorded sound.

A performance that completely fails and one whose tempos are even slower, is that of Yuri Temirkanov's (RCA Red Seal 7918-2 RC) in which both conductor and soloist Natalia Gutman give a disappointingly drab and apathetic performance. The only longer performance is that of Konstantin Krimets and the Russian PO (Arte Nova 74321 49688 2) where cellist Kyrill Rodin maintains a viable presence, yet in a performance whose extremely slow tempos in the final rondo do more to disconnect rather than constructively bond the music's diverse sections.

At the other tempo extreme cellist Ivan Monighetti offers the shortest performance on record, demonstrating that a fast pace does not rule out an emotionally engaging and highly personalized performance. This he delivers, if not in ideally recorded sound, with conductor Vladimir Valek and the Prague Symphony Orchestra (harmonia mundi LDC 278 1099).

Mtsislav Rostropovich, to whom the work is dedicated, is the unassailable master at being able to penetrate the work's essence with gripping authority. In his five recorded performances of the work, he has tended toward the faster end of the tempo spectrum with great effect. Significantly, he is able to maintain the essential forward drive in the final rondo while imparting character to its highly variegated sections. Rostropovich's performance with David Oistrakh conducting the Moscow State SO (Revelation RV 10087; reviewed in DSCH No. 9) has a splendid intensity, if it is a bit too hard driven. Still, this and any one of his other superb performances with Jean Martinon/CSO (on a bootleg Aries LP), Seji Ozawa/BSO (DG 439 481-2) and especially Svetlanov/USSR State SO (Russian Disc RD CD 11 109 [deleted; Rob Cowan reports that the version by these performers on EMI is distinct from the version on Russian Disc]) speak from the music's soul and should be required listening for those with a serious interest in the work.

In the current disc, the tempos taken by Polyansky and cellist Frans Helmerson fall somewhere within Rostropovich's range of performances, yet at the same time give the impression of moving the music ahead at a faster rate. This is due to the 'quick read' approach taken by conductor and soloist where forward momentum takes interpretive priority over the reflective shading of details. The performance does lack a certain amount of nuance and may run a bit cool in comparison to its competition. Yet one must acknowledge what works and what effectively serves the music. This performance does do both and I was quite moved by it, though I do have my reservations.

In the Largo, for example, the dramatic pauses in Helmerson's phrasing do sound a bit clipped where they breathe with more nuance in Rostropovich's hands. Likewise, there is a matter-of-factness to the manner in which Helmerson thrusts the glissandi in the Scherzo. He is energetic, though a bit distant in the tortured cadenza leading up to the principal climax. Rostropovich, in the same cadenza, is far more visceral as he battles face-to-face the demons that torment this work. The explosive climax which follows has emotional clout, though seems a bit swept into the forward stream under Polyansky. It is given more monumental status, appropriate to its structural importance, in the fine performances by Schiff/Shostakovich (Philips 412 526-2) or Rostropovich/Svetlanov.

At the same time, Helmerson plays with impressive precision and with a great deal of reactive alertness. His somewhat aloof approach, moreover, seems to work well with the enigmatic nature of the music. Polyansky's strong forward current imparts more than the prerequisite tension as discussed above, and accentuates the essential sense of inevitability toward its final destination.

It is a performance, once again, whose strength lies in the breadth of its conception rather than in its attention to details. Though it would be nice to have both attributes, it is fair to say that these artists are more successful in bringing this work together than a good number of their competitors. Of the sixteen recordings of the Second Cello Concerto, Polyansky's would not be my first pick, yet I have no hesitation recommending it as a preferred competitor among currently available choices. The fine orchestral playing is well served by Chandos' sonics.

The paper-mache prop that Shostakovich calls his Twelfth Symphony brings us to a musical mystery of a completely different sort. In his fine liner note, Eric Roseberry makes an attempt to define a coherent extramusical program to the Symphony by relating the cryptic (and outright obscure) movement titles to events in the life of Lenin. This is, of course, the ostensible narrative of the work, but in the listening, the music seems deliberately construed to be nothing of the sort. Rather it seems to be a cagily assembled shell, a 'non-symphony', perhaps intended for the consumption of the non-musical bureaucracy. Though I disagree with Ian MacDonald's excessively literal approach to musical interpretation, we may stand on common ground in not accepting this work at face value but rather as some sort of patronizing gesture with an 'unmusical' vengeance. Though it was written a year before the dissident Thirteenth Symphony, one cannot help entertaining the notion, as MacDonald also does in his book, that the Twelfth was offered as a preemptory gesture of appeasement in anticipation of the official reaction to its politically charged successor. Shostakovich, in cunningly assigning these works the adjacent opus numbers 112 and 113 almost seems to be saying, Indeed so; How many more signals do you need?

There is only one movement in the Twelfth Symphony worthy of repeated listenings and deserving of the adjective 'symphonic'. That, of course, is the opening movement, whose sturdy tunes variously recall Borodin's, Beethoven's Ode to Joy, and the finale of the composer's own Tenth Symphony. The music's endless melodic invention, uninterrupted flashes of inspiration and rhythmically charged interplay propel the movement forward with breathtaking momentum. Its prolonged athletic exuberance, furthermore, is unparalleled in any Shostakovich first movement. It is music that neither probes nor transforms the soul, but what a gloriously boisterous and eminently choreographable sound it makes.

Unfortunately, the engaging music of the Symphony ends with this movement. The remainder of the work does really sound as if it were written as a last minute fill-in, as Lev Lebedinsky quotes the composer (Elizabeth Wilson, p. 346), in three or four days' time. Regardless of that, one only needs the testimony of the music itself to draw a conclusion. The last movement, for example, is generally acknowledged by various commentators to be suffering from a drearily and blatantly miscalculated rate of repetition, one that seems suspiciously unlikely for a composer of Shostakovich's sensibilities. And the demolition derby that comprises the brief third movement is too banal and bombastic to make any serious claim as a symphonic movement.

It is in the slow movement Razliv where we find one of the more disturbing curiosities of the Shostakovich canon, a subtly and skillfully disguised musical vacancy. There are those who find merit to this part of the score, yet I hear a movement whose materials are developmentally paralyzed. Unlike the typical climax-driven Shostakovich slow movement, its musical phrases are dislocated from one another and avoid any kind of interactive or reactive process. The result is a patchwork of inert episodes that are strangely ineffective, as if set wandering in musical limbo. There is one paragraph of genuine beauty where the strings seem headed toward a culmination (track 2, 4:06) at which point the otherwise stillborn chorale motif is nicely enveloped into the crest of the phrase. Yet the destination soon vanishes as we return to inert gestures, the blank pizzicato phrase, the wooden chorale motif, the musical necropolis. The various instrumental solos toward the end of the movement sound particularly out of place as they take on the reflective posture of solos in previous Shostakovich symphonies. In this movement they simply noodle around in an expressive vacuum, sleepily rehashing the nonevents which precede them.

Regarding the performance, the first movement's very physical level of communication requires a response in kind, and Polyansky delivers with more than gusto. His rhythmic punctuations and reactions to the mercurial transitions are sharp and well-turned. The tempo is brisk without being excessive, with fine dynamic control of the work's gymnastic gestures. Most important, Polyansky maintains the "thrill" effect all the way through with admirable aerobic stamina. Compare the Inbal/Vienna performance (Denon CO-78968) of recent vintage where the tempi are similar if not faster, but which does not have as favourable an aggressive edge in terms of instrumental attack. The percussion orgy in the third movement is also handled with ample ammunition and does not disappoint. Even in the ill-fated Razliv section, Polyansky displays sensitivity to mood and phrasing as if he were conducting a real Shostakovich slow movement.

The one grievance I would voice is that the orchestral image on the Chandos recording is a bit recessed, which is not the case with the more intimately recorded cello concerto. As a result, some details of the fast passage work do not come through as sharply as they do in, say, the classic Mravinsky performance on Melodiya. The latter recording pretty much sets the standard for all Twelfth performances to follow and is benefited by a nice crisp acoustic. Chandos' added ambience fortunately does not detract from any of the other praiseworthy attributes of this fine performance.

Louis Blois
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