DSCH 10 Shostakovich CD Reviews - From Jewish Folk Poetry; New Babylon

From Jewish Folk Poetry, Op. 79[a]; New Babylon film music, Op. 18.
Valeri Polyansky, Russian State Symphony Orchestra, Tatiana Sharova (soprano)[a], Ludmila Kuznetsova (mezzo)[a], Alexei Martynov (tenor)[a].
Chandos CHAN 9600. DDD. TT: 69:37

A debt of gratitude is owed Gennadi Rozhdestvensky for his splendid restoration and arrangement into suite form of Shostakovich's landmark first film score, New Babylon. One wonders what might have happened to this invaluable score if the conductor had not, early in 1976, discovered the instrumental parts in a storeroom at Moscow's Lenin Library. In the twenty-two years since his première recording of the work with members of the Moscow PO (on Melodiya; currently available on Russian Disc RDCD 11064), this rollicking and vibrant music has received surprisingly little attention. The current performance of the suite by Valeri Polyansky is the first to appear in so many years, the only other recorded version being that of James Judd and the Berlin RSO, whose digital release of 1990 (Capriccio 10 341/42) marked the world première of the complete, unabridged score.

Rozhdestvensky, Moscow PO, Suites from New Babylon, Golden Hills

Judd, Berlin RSO, New Babylon complete, Five Days Five Nights

The music to New Babylon was written just as Shostakovich's style had rapidly shifted away from its experimental phase, epitomized by the Second Symphony and the opera, The Nose, toward a lyrical style which embraced popular dance forms in a most idiosyncratic fashion. The scores from this period (1928 - 1936), which include the ballets The Age of Gold and The Bolt, are characterized by nervous, densely packed lyricism, and effortless manoeuvering of rapid episodic changes, features which seem perfectly tailored to the animated demands of the cinema.

New Babylon's score contains all of these attributes plus what must have been the young composer's greatest musical joy at the time, the expression of outrageous sarcasm and grotesque humour in an endless stream of lyrical wit. That and the setting of the film, about the 1871 Paris Commune, led Shostakovich to adopt a carefree, if somewhat heavily rhythmic, Gallic demeanour that would become a recurring feature of his subsequent light music.

The three recorded versions of New Babylon offer plenty of good choices. Each is competitive with one another on matters of performance, to varying degrees, and each represents a recording first. Eric Roseberry's liner note states that Polyansky uses the seven-part, 45-minute suite arranged and recorded by Rozhdestvensky. The music unquestionably follows Rozhdestvensky's cuts, however the sound of the recording suggests that Polyansky is using larger forces than the small ensemble that appears in the elder conductor's original recording. The differences are slightly more than a matter of reinforcement and size, as I have noticed xylophone highlighting and string section embellishments in Polyansky's recording which do not appear in Rozhdestvensky's.

According to other sources, two instrumentations of the original score were prepared at the time of its composition in 1929, a lighter one to accommodate a smaller pit orchestra and another for a larger ensemble. Polyansky's version of the suite was evidently enhanced by parts taken from the expanded edition and thus, is something of a world première.

In comparing the merits of the three versions, the wonderfully individual character of the instrumental work that Rozhdestvensky, in his heyday, was able to elicit from his ensemble imparts a liveliness and personalized quality that is simply unmatched in the other two performances. His is a performance that I would not want to do without. James Judd also handles the score with buoyancy, yet some of the time he seems to be racing and pacing the clock, no doubt due to the fact that his version includes every last musical filler and repeat which Rozhdestvensky filters out of his arrangement. Judd's complete New Babylon lasts almost twice as long as the suite and times in at 83:49. For those who can't get enough of this preciously short-lived and wickedly offbeat period of Shostakovich's music, this fine recording is one to consider as well.

Polyansky brings his own dashing showmanship to the music, energetically negotiating the sharp episodic turns and detours, leaving not so much as a single audible seam in its bustling musical patchwork. He is alternately gracious and sardonic in the Paris movement's sumptuous waltz sequence, and dives forward with more than due fanfare into the surprise appearance of Offenbach's Cancan. He also scores high atmospheric points with the solo work in The Siege of Paris and the eerie cymbal crescendi in the opening bars of Versailles.

One of the ongoing pleasures of the Polyansky disc is the superb clarity of its digital sound, a feature which is superior to that of its discmates. The orchestra has a nicely distributed presence without sounding too close or distant, permitting a splendidly clear registration of the almost constant solo work. With Rozhdestvensky's rendition again in current rerelease, Polyansky's version offers a very attractive alternative.

Shostakovich's first important song cycle, From Jewish Folk Poetry, Op.79, was completed in October 1948. It was one of the works, along with the First Violin Concerto, completed the previous March, whose première was strategically delayed until after Stalin's death. The anti-Formalist decree of February of that year put Shostakovich and other Soviet composers on the alert for transgressions against official boundaries of musical acceptability.

According to Laurel Fay, the Op. 79 songs, with their basis in folksong, were originally intended as a gesture of compliance with the decree, yet had the misfortune of having been completed in Fall, 1948, when Stalin was launching a fierce new anti-Semitic campaign. Not everyone agrees with this position. Those opposing this view feel that the choice of Jewish material was a conscious gesture of protest from the point of conception. The truth seems to lie somewhere in between.

Through his music, Shostakovich expressed a strong spiritual identification with Jewish music, and implicitly, with the Jews themselves as an oppressed group, in works such as the Second Piano Trio and especially the Scherzo of the suppressed Violin Concerto. It is possible, given the composer's practiced skills of musical self-defense, that he might have intended to walk the fine line of dual expediency in the poorly timed Op. 79 songs, intending them as an offering of both public conformity and private dissidence. The impression of strategic intent is fortified by the content of the texts in which hardships of Czarist Russia are expressed in the first eight songs followed by the glorification of Soviet life in the final three. To subscribers of dissident thought in Shostakovich's music, it would not be the first time that the composer tagged on a suspiciously upbeat finale to a serious work as a patronizing and compensating gesture. Even by the most conservative interpretation, one must acknowledge that the composer must have had some idea of the controversial nature of an explicitly Jewish theme, particularly in the midst of Zhdanovshchina, and even before it.

From Jewish Folk Poetry, works by Shaporin, Ippolitov-Ivanov, Kabalevsky

Haitink, From Jewish Folk Poetry, Symphony No. 15

Performances of From Jewish Folk Poetry were surprisingly scant in the first 30 years of its existence and, fortunately, have increased in frequency and quality in recent years. The grandfather of all recordings, made in 1955, features the performers who premièred the work, Nina Dorliak, Zara Dolukhanova, Alexei Maslennikov, and the composer as pianist. That monophonic version still remains a very effective and listenable performance (available on Russian Disc RDCD 15015).

Yet the expressive dimension of the work was considerably expanded with the long-delayed release of its orchestral version. It is hard to believe that no new recording of the cycle was issued until 1970 when Kurt Sanderling, the Berlin City SO and soloists premièred the orchestral version in German translation in a very fine performance on a Helidor Wergo LP (reissued as Berlin Classics BER9016).

Another decade-long hiatus preceded Svetlanov's 1980 recording (issued on Melodiya in 1982; not currently available) with the USSR SO, soloists Raisa and Galina Borisova and Alexei Maslennikov. Despite the many strengths of its fine vocalists, Svetlanov's orchestral accompaniment is surprisingly bland to the point where it significantly detracts from the quality of the performance. The orchestral version's first digital representation with Bernard Haitink in 1986 (reissued in Decca/London's boxed set 444 430-2 [reissued on Ovation 425 069-2]) again features good voices, but the performance suffers from that conductor's typically overly-premeditated tempos. Yuri Ahranovich's subsequent performance of the first eight songs with the Jerusalem SO (Stradivari SCD 8005) in its first Yiddish version is full of wonderful vitality, though the recording suffers from a number of imperfections associated with live-audience taping. A new generation of performance and technical excellence was introduced with Neeme Järvi's strongly individual interpretation on a 1994 Deutsche Grammophon release with the Gothenberg Symphony Orchestra and soloists (DG 439 860-2).

The current version of the cycle under Valeri Polyansky achieves technical and interpretive strengths competitive with Järvi's. As in Järvi's performance, Polyansky's orchestra is not merely a neutral backdrop but an ongoing shaping force, whether in the background or as an active participant as in the heightened drama of the sixth (The Deserted Father) and seventh (Song of Misery) songs. The three soloists are wonderfully expressive and fully in the moment. They are also impressively united in execution and interpretation in the songs that include more than one singer. The sorrow of the opening song, Lament for a Dead Child, for soprano and mezzo, is finely wrought and heartfelt. In the eighth song, Winter, all three are wonderfully evocative of the wind's aching chill. Mezzo-soprano Ludmila Kuznetsova's vocal quality is particularly noteworthy and her rendition of the third song, Lullaby, is stunning. Tenor Alexei Martynov has a firm tone and a strong dramatic energy which he demonstrates in the The Abandoned Father and A Good Life, the ninth song. I would have preferred a bit more presence in soprano Tatiana Sharova's voice, whose performance is nevertheless very dedicated. I also would have preferred a more lively rendition of the catchy second song (The Thoughtful Mother and Aunt, with the memorable "by-by-by" syllables) and the final song, Happiness.

Regardless, these soloists are comparable, even somewhat preferable, to the soloists in Järvi's equally desirable rendition of From Jewish Folk Poetry. For this performance and the one of New Babylon, this Chandos disc is a welcome addition to the discographies of these relatively neglected yet essential Shostakovich scores.

Louis Blois
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