Complete Songs and Romances, Volume 1
Six Romances to Verses of Raleigh, Burns and Shakespeare, Op. 62 (1945); §Four Songs to Dolmatovsky Lyrics, op 86 (1951); Spanish Songs, op 100 (1956); Five Krokodil Romances, Op. 121 (1965); Seven Romances to Verses by Blok, Op. 127 (1967).
Victoria Evtodieva (soprano), Mikhail Lukonin (baritone), Fyodor Kuznetsov (bass), Yuri Serov (piano), Lidiya Kovalenko (violin), Irina Molokina (cello).
René Gailly/Vox Temporis VTP CD92 041. DDD. TT 74:30.
Recorded St.-Catherine Lutheran Church, St. Petersburg, 23 March, 2, 7 & 24 April, 4 May 1998.
§World première recording.

With Shostakovich's major orchestral and chamber works having settled fairly well into the mainstream, the single most important source of repertoire enrichment remains the composer's song cycles. At last, a record company is taking the matter into their own hands with a project entitled "The Complete Songs and Romances of Shostakovich". The new series, launched by the independent label René Gailly, will make history, when and if completed, by being the first to offer an exhaustive survey of this chronically under-represented portion of the catalogue. This ambitious undertaking follows Neeme Järvi's superb three-volume survey of the composer's orchestral song settings on Deutsche Grammophon. By contrast, René Gailly is pursuing their survey on a smaller scale by focusing on the versions with piano accompaniment. As a result, their collection is sure to cover a lot more territory and include some long-awaited world premières - one of which appears on the first volume under review.

The panoramic overview that will eventually emerge will allow us to reassess the composer's work in a genre that I have always felt was not his most natural form of expression. Though Shostakovich was an unquestioned master of chamber and symphonic music, his relationship to the art song remained somewhat tentative throughout his career. Only with his increasing attention to vocal music in the final years did he at last carve out a highly individual language in that genre that was capable of the same depth of expression of his instrumental music. The belated ripening of his art song efforts was a result, in significant part, of the late period's fertile boundary crossings between chamber, symphonic and vocal genres. The Fourteenth Symphony, for example, takes the unique form of a cycle of songs, and calls for chamber-like instrumentation. Likewise, the surrounding song cycles assume a symphonic breadth of expression missing in earlier cycles. From this period, more specifically the last eight years, come the three supreme towers of his art song writing: the daringly original Michelangelo Suite, the profoundly expressive Tsvetaeva Suite, and the unquestionable masterpiece of them all, the Seven Blok Romances.

Preceding these peaks, Shostakovich composed one work worthy of this company, the brilliant From Jewish Folk Poetry (FJFP) cycle. It uniquely stands apart from his other vocal music of 1940s and 1950s because of the novelty and raw power of its lyricism, a result of a remarkable cross-fertilization of the composer's own expressive and lyrical gestures with that of Jewish folk music.

The composer's remaining song cycles, numbering roughly a dozen, fall into very different categories. For decades after his landmark opera, Lady Macbeth, the composer tended to reserve his more benign inspirations to the realm of vocal music, perhaps because of the traumatic associations the genre invoked. Evidently, the shattering Pravda denunciations of 1936 that permanently destroyed Shostakovich the opera composer also had derailing effects on every other aspect of the composer's vocal music.

Of the at least half-dozen cycles that Shostakovich wrote during the 1950s, the two contained in the current disc are representative of the period. They are the Four Songs to Dolmatovsky Lyrics (1951) and the Spanish Songs (1956). Neither work follows the fresh, creative initiatives forged in the recently completed FJFP of 1948. Rather, the cycles of the subsequent, and for the composer, most prolific songwriting decade, are characterized by a smaller creative investment, a retreat to more conservative technical means and conventional lyricism. The composer may have been writing "for the bureaucracy" during this period, as the shadow of Stalin was still looming heavily over Russian culture well after his death in 1953. Still, the musical quality of these works is not totally compromised. Within the given conservative boundaries, Shostakovich was able to write some charmingly inspired melodies.

The Four Songs to words by Yevgeny Dolmatovsky, op 86, of 1951 (not to be confused with the subsequent Five Romances, Op. 98, also to Dolmatovsky texts) appears here in its world première recording in complete form, though songs #s 1 and 3 of the set have appeared separately elsewhere. The cycle is a jewel box of beautifully written songs in the Russian style. They are gently flowing little gems that were originally written as incidental music for a failed play and subsequently revised by the composer. Though the work was not originally conceived as an independent cycle, the songs share a warm, graceful lyricism, each one pleasing and unassuming in its formal simplicity of repeated two-part phrases.

Archivists will take particular delight with the first song, Motherland Hears, as it achieved independent fame as the first song to be sung from space by Yuri Gagarin in 1961, as well as having been used for many years as the theme song of the All-Union Radio broadcasts. The rest of the cycle invites the listener to play "name that cross-reference". For example, the third song, Loves or Loves Not, bears similarity to the main tune of the film Unforgettable Year 1919 which Shostakovich scored the same year (1951). This particular song, as well as the two that surround it, contain accompaniment figurations similar to Prelude No. 17 of the Op. 87 cycle, also completed the same year.

Until now, my only representation of the Op. 86 cycle was of its lead song, the celebrated Motherland Hears, from an old 1959 10-inch Melodiya mono LP [D 5062-63] containing a collector's grab bag of the composer's songs performed by various artists. The performers in this isolated extract were the State Academic Russian Choir and an unidentified soprano, who projects it with a husky, emotionally wrapped zeal that could rouse patriotic fervor in the most torpid listener. On the current album, soprano Victoria Evtodieva offers a gentler style of performance that makes a very civilized case for the cycle. Her voice's natural sweetness is well suited to this music, as she carries off these songs with a direct and unassuming manner that borders on neither excess nor blandness.

In 1956 the periodical, Soviet Music (Sovetskaya Muzyka), asked Shostakovich to write a short work to publish as a supplement to their issue commemorating the composer's 50th birthday. The result was the Spanish Songs, Op. 100, a colourful opus, yet surprisingly one of the most un-Shostakovian works in the catalogue. Here the composer pursues a kind of Albeniz-like impersonation, fragrantly recreating some of the authentic rhythmic and harmonic inflections of Spanish music - this at the expense of any idiosyncrasies that would reveal the identity of the composer to an unwitting listener. Another measure of perceptual dissonance arises from the fact that these Iberian settings are sung in the Russian language, as they always have throughout their recording history, a fact that argues strongly for an original language version of the work. That alteration, of course, would make seamless the transformation of Shostakovich into Albeniz.

As in the Dolmatovsky songs, the music adheres to conventional symmetries and the simple aesthetic of good, straightforward tunesmanship. Unlike the FJFP cycle that contains original melodies cast in a Jewish style, the Spanish Songs are exclusively made up of pre-existing folk material and can, therefore, be considered an arrangement rather than an original composition.

One is compelled to consider the political and artistic ramifications of the work's stylistic disguise, especially in light of the humble vocal offerings of the surrounding years. Is this work simply a modest little offering submitted in response to the modest parameters of Sovetskaya Muzyka's request? The almost total concealment of musical self no doubt had become an instinctual reflex to the heightened pressures of the Zhdanov era. Were the Spanish Songs left over from that dreaded period when the bureaucracy needed to be appeased with folkloric-derived hackwork? Was the total self-negation in part a wry commentary on the gulf separating the composer's private and public persona? One might also consider whether these Spanish Songs and the never-recorded Greek Songs (1952-3) were tossed off to make it seem that FJFP was merely part of an ongoing series of ethnic songs, thus diverting attention away from FJFP's dissident edge (note that the public première of FJFP, delayed until 1955, falls between the appearance of the Greek and Spanish songs). On a purely artistic basis, one may ask whether Shostakovich sought (though evidently did not find) in the Spanish and Greek musical idioms the same potent catalyst that Jewish folk music had provided a few years earlier.

Whatever the case, Spanish Songs achieved immediate and enduring popularity. The songs are delightfully lyrical, emphasizing more the courtly elegance than the sultry abandon of Spanish music. Over the years it has been well represented in the bins, proving itself viable not only for mezzo-soprano, for which it was originally written, but for male voice as well. Among the vinyl fossils worthy of mention is Melodiya's version of the work in 1964 (D 14787-8, mono) featuring mezzo Nina Isakova (accompanied by Yevgeniya Bruk) who meticulously savours every note and phrase in her most expressive, detailed interpretation, one quite worthy of rerelease. (For the record, the world première of the work took place only a few years earlier on a Decca 7" 45 rpm, SEC 5500, and features the rather unstable intonations of Oda Slobodskaya, a bit past her prime, accompanied by Ivor Newton). In the 1980s, Melodiya released very effective versions sung by basses Artur Eisen and Alexander Vedernikov (the reissue of the former can be found on Olympia OCD 194 from 1988).

More recently, Philips released an album entitled Bolero, A Spanish Songbook (289 446 708-2), featuring the highly commendable talents of mezzo-soprano Olga Borodina. That album mixes Iberian pearls by mainly Russian and Spanish composers, and includes a wonderfully charismatic performance of the Op. 100 set with an absolutely sparkling piano accompaniment by Semyon Skigin. Another successful recent issue features a lively performance by bass Paul Plishka with fine accompaniment by Thomas Hrynkiw (Dinemec DCCD 016).

Mikhail Lukonin, who I believe is the first baritone to record this cycle, makes a very successful case for the work in his vocal range. He negotiates the melismatic embellishments of the first song, Farewell to Granada with a graceful flair missing in Artur Eizen's bass version. He also rises nicely from a somber to a festive tone in the tripartite First Time I Met You. Lukonin has a naturally bright tone with a nice, clear centre. He is also gifted with fine articulation and an appealingly energetic presence, features wholly appropriate to these primarily faster songs of lighter content.

Also contained on this CD are two works for bass voice and piano separated by more than twenty years, the Six Romances to verses of Raleigh, Burns and Shakespeare, and the Krokodil Romances. The British Romances are a wartime work that I discussed in some detail in DSCH No. 9. Written contemporaneously with his unfinished opera (I should rather say prolonged series of recitatives), The Gamblers, the songs have the melodramatic contour of operatic arias, such as the opening Sir Walter Raleigh… and the Sonnet LXVI, and have a developmental quality missing in the Opp. 86 and 100 discussed above. Some songs, like Jenny and the final King's Campaign, are like jester's intervals, not without their own moral message, that provide short fillings between the more serious songs. The shifting aesthetic directions from one song to the next robs the work of a strong cumulative impact. However, the colorful variety of moods and warm, lyrical character of each song make for a very appealing, if oddly fitting, collection.

Between 1960 and 1966 Shostakovich was drawn to the art song three times by verses of a satirical nature, the 1960 Satires cycle, the isolated song Preface of 1966, and the Krokodil Romances of 1965. The focus on satire during these years indicates a shift occurring in the composer's attitude toward the art song. In the Krokodil cycle, recorded herein, the verses were drawn from five tongue-in-cheek letters plucked from a single issue of the popular satire magazine of the same name. The arbitrariness of the text choices also suggests that the composer was searching for new challenges in the genre, a break away from the musical and textual conventions that dominated his song writing of the previous decade.

The Krokodil experiment is a curiosity, if not a complete artistic success. It is awkwardly balanced in that the first song is more than twice as long as any one of the remaining four. Each of the last consists of little snippets lasting only about a minute or so that unfortunately come to an end just as they become interesting. Shostakovich-the-redirected-opera-composer again surfaces in the first song, a melodramatic recitative in which a disgruntled passenger grumbles fiercely about a rude bus driver. The remaining songs consist of similar verbal and musical trifles that, for their brief length, carve a pungently memorable set of musical profiles using original or borrowed tunes. Given the work's flaws and spur-of-the-moment quality, both musical and textual, the Krokodil cycle cannot be considered a major work by the composer. However, it does have a number of amusing theatrical moments that offer an all too brief sampling, as does the later, more substantial Lebyadkin Romances, of what comic opera might have sounded like in the years of the composer's advanced maturity.

In my review of the orchestral version of the work in DSCH No. 9, I was impressed with the tone and dramatic presence of bass Alexei Mochalov on an all-Shostakovich song disc (Triton 17 008) that I still regard as a most desirable library item. Mochalov set quite high standards for the lighter fare that he offers on that release, which contains both the British and Krokodil Romances.

On the current disc, Fyodor Kuznetsov's strengths lie in the rich resonance of his basso - one that I found even richer than that of Mochalov's - and the dramatic intensity he brings to these songs. In the British Romances he responds well to the declamatory moodiness and punctuated phrases in the opening, Sir Walter Raleigh to his Sonne, and brings a pastoral warmth to the droning caresses of the following O Wert thou…. At the same I found him a bit lacking in the playfulness called for in some of the songs of satirical content; for example in the final King's Campaign of the British songs and a number of the Krokodil songs where more campiness would have been a plus. Kuznetsov sings straight from the shoulder. He lacks the theatrical flexibility of Mochalov's performances, yet compensates with a vocal heartiness and commanding intensity that establishes a thoroughly solid and convincing presence. He shines in the Op. 62 No. 4, MacPherson's Farewell, where one could imagine him as an ideal choice of soloist in the Thirteenth Symphony, the main theme of whose Humor movement derives from this song. He also builds nicely to the dramatic crest in the substantial Op. 62 No. 5, Sonnet #66, and in the final Krokodil song, Exaggerated Delight, whose ominous music completely contradicts the trivial content of its text. If Mr. Kuznetsov's interpretations tend to be on the serious side, they are also guided by an intelligence and musical sensibility that bring these works very much to life.

The Blok Romances occupy a unique place in the Shostakovich oeuvre as the work marks a profound transformation in the composer's approach to the song genre. In these Romances Shostakovich achieves a new and potent fusion between vocal and chamber styles, incorporating the expressive immediacy of the former with the complex language and broad dramatic structure of the latter. The Romances also reach a new psychological depth missing in his previous songs as the composer transforms Blok's melancholic verses into a highly personalized, darkly haunting journey into the soul.

The lofty quality of the lyricism and intense level of concentration sustained throughout each of the seven songs is remarkable. With its extraordinary economy of writing, such that not a single note is either wasted or out of place, combined with its uninterrupted flow of exquisitely elevated lyricism, the Blok Romances holds the position, in my view, of Shostakovich's unequalled masterpiece in the genre of the song cycle.

The work's bleak character is no doubt related to the fact that it was written in 1967 while Shostakovich was in hospital recovering from his first heart attack. In addition to being the product of a great mind focused by the confrontation of his own mortality, the songs also seem to have been written in a single, inspired sitting, as they are joined on many organic levels: motivically, atmospherically, instrumentally, etc. These interconnected facets embrace an overarching unity unprecedented in the composer's song catalogue. They are the first of the composer's cycles to boast a structure and breadth of vision that can be called symphonic, and as Dorothea Redpenning has pointed out, form a prototype of the subsequent Fourteenth Symphony.

The piano trio is also unique in the Shostakovich song canon. Rather than taking on the usual accompaniment role, the cello, violin and piano assume a status of almost equal importance with that of the vocal line. The interlocking scheme of instrumentation that is used from one song to the next, exhausting every possible combination of the three instruments, in solos, pairs, and in the final song, all three together, imposes yet another binding structure to the work.

The essential axis of tension that bonds these songs together is the contrast established between two very Mahlerian poles, one of sweet, yearning innocence (as in the opening Ophelia's Song and the third, We were together) and the other of dark, almost morbid agitation (as in the second and fifth songs, Gamayun and Tempest). These two diametric opposites alternate with each other over the course of the first five songs, and are ultimately brought into direct confrontation with each other in the sixth (Secret Signs), and finally reach their startlingly bleak point of resolution - or rather irresolution- in the final song (Music). The drama forms a complete arch of conflict/resolution that, as noted above, is found in the composer's pure instrumental forms. This dark universe of expression places enormous demands on the part of its performers, especially the soloist, insisting upon not only interpretation, but the projection of a fully formed gestalt, a premeditated frame of mind that is fully immersed with the conflicting yet continuously unfolding states of anger, depression, tenderness and despair that lie at the work's core. That and the unforgiving dynamic demands in the soprano part make this a daunting challenge for any set of performers.

Though I have never heard a recording to my complete satisfaction, Elizabeth Soderstrom's performance with members of the Fitzwilliam Quartet and pianist Vladimir Ashkenazy (Decca CD 411 940-2DH) is one of particularly fine merit. While Ms. Soderstrom's unrestrained vibrato may be of some distraction, her concentration and overall grasp of the work is remarkable. The performance also benefits considerably from strongly profiled performances on the part of the supporting players, in particular, Ashkenazy's superbly intense pianism.

Soprano Victoria Evtodieva, who appears earlier in the disc in the Dolmatovsky songs, brings to the Blok Romances a well-matched combination of timbral purity and the ability to meet the extraordinary dynamic challenges of the work. In the opening song she captures the rarefied atmosphere of longing and vulnerability that will reverberate throughout the rest of the cycle. Likewise, the bittersweet simplicity of the third song, We were together, and the moonlit beauty of the fourth, City is asleep, are carried off with much tenderness. If there is one aspect to her performance that I found less than ideal it is that she did not offer as nuanced an interpretation of the words as she might have, and thus did not fully penetrate the work's psychological dimension. Otherwise, she summons an impressive volume in the more agitated songs, especially in the climactically revelatory moments in the final two of the set. It is essential that in these passages the innocent yearning of the earlier songs is fully betrayed with outcries of heartfelt despair. Ms Evtodieva, with her impressive dynamic range, makes good on these climactic moments and delivers a solidly moving realization of this magnificent work.

The three instrumentalists in this performance are to be commended for their musicianship and level of involvement. Pianist Yuri Serov, who wrote the album's very informative liner notes and who accompanies throughout the disc, earns his honorary medal as a wholly sympathetic Shostakovich interpreter in full command of the idiom. The recorded sound throughout is excellent.

My advice is to mark this disc prominently on your purchase list. René Gailly has assembled an impressive roundup of talent in an equally impressive first entry of their ambitious song project. The series promises to contain the most interesting and valuable new releases of the composer's music.

Louis Blois
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DSCH No. 11.
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