The Sun Shines Over Our Homeland, cantata, op. 90, for children's chorus, mixed chorus, and orchestra; Song of the Forests, oratorio, op. 81, for tenor, bass, children's chorus and orchestra; Suite from the opera The Nose, Op.15a.
Michail Jurowski, Kölner Rundfunk Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, Wladimir Kasatschuk (tenor), Stanislaw Sulejmanow (bass).
Capriccio 10 779. DDD. TT 75:48.
Recorded Philharmonie, Köln, 3-8 June 1996.

Few conductors have diversified the Shostakovich recording repertoire more than Michail Jurowski. While noted specialists Gennady Rozhdestvensky and Neeme Järvi have taken momentary pause from their pioneering work in this field, Jurowski's decade-long series on Capriccio continues to turn out one all-Shostakovich program after another, focusing on the less familiar portions of the catalogue. The technical and musical merits of the series have earned it respectability, if some of the vocalists in recent recordings have fallen somewhat short of so-called "world class" status. The current instalment, featuring three previously recorded works, continues Jurowski's recent exploration of repertoire combining voice and orchestra.

The two works for chorus and orchestra that lead the program - the 1949 oratorio, Song of the Forests and the 1952 cantata, Sun Shines Over Our Motherland - are closely linked in a number of respects: period of composition, stylistic details and attitude, performance forces required, and not least, in the adverse political circumstances that prompted their creation. Both works date from one of the most politically troubled periods for Soviet composers, the years following the public reprimands of 1949 to Stalin's death in 1953. The works are extroverted offerings that obligingly comply with the aesthetic guidelines set forth by the Formalist attacks of the time.

The seven-part Song of the Forests sings the praises of Stalin's reforestation program while the text to the single movement Sun Shines… could not be more generic in its patriotic puffery. Each is set to nauseatingly inflated lyrics by the poet-laureate of Soviet literary hacks, Yevgeni Dolmatovsky.

The celebratory tone of this pair of works belies the horrifying fact that they were written as survival measures, insincere public demonstrations of Shostakovich's obedience and musical rehabilitation. The composer's true attitude is revealed in a private remark he passed about Song of the Forests, as related in Laurel Fay's Shostakovich: A Life: "I sat down at night and, within a few hours dashed off something 'haphazardly'. When I submitted what I had written, to my amazement and horror, they shook my hand and paid me." (In the fifth movement, Komsomol Youth Step Out, for example, Shostakovich even stoops to write a genuinely rousing march that mimics the style of the Soviet Army Chorus's repertoire, a genre he once said he detested).

Both works are written in a stable, late 19th Century musical language and seem to have been written in a kind of detached, "automatic pilot" mode of creativity. Many of the harmonic progressions and melodic phrases seem to be drawn from a predictable, almost prefabricated reservoir of gestures similar to that found in the numerous film scores penned by the composer during the same troubled period. They offer a primary example of Shostakovich's "dumbed down" musical language that he reserved for public or official consumption, a genuinely quantifiable doublespeak, subversive in its patently superficial manner. While they contain no great moments of inspiration, the music in these choral works is extremely listenable, lyrically ingratiating and at times, clever. At the very least, one may be impressed with the composer's effortless command of technique in the finely crafted passages for chorus and orchestra.

The charms of Song of the Forests have attracted a number of leading Soviet conductors dating back to 1950 when Yevgeny Mravinsky's performance was cast on a series of Melodiya 78s, subsequently reissued in the LP era. Unfortunately, its poor monophonic fidelity does not justify digital reissuing and it remains a mere curiosity. The work became known in the West after the mid-1970s, mainly through the very fine performance on an EMI/Angel LP by Alexander Yurlov and forces, originally issued by Melodiya. The performance by Yevgeny Svetlanov, recorded on Melodiya and issued in 1980, did not receive worldwide distribution. After a hiatus of more than a decade, the oratorio digitally resurfaced in a renaissance of releases in the 1990s. In 1994 Russian Disc reissued the aforementioned analogue performance with Yurlov, soloists and the Moscow Phil. and State Boys Choir (RD CD 11 048). That was followed in 1997 and 1998 by two digital performances: respectively, Vladimir Fedoseyev with the Moscow RSO (JVC 6503) and Yuri Temirkanov with St. Petersburg performers (BMG/RCA 6887).

The current performance by Jurowski is a splendid addition to this pedigree. The choral forces and soloists have a fine ensemble sound and perform with gusto and admirable sensitivity to the various lyrical moods of each movement. I was impressed with the warmth and beautiful phrasing of the male chorus in the opening movement. Also, the woodwind detail in the second, the all-inclusive ensemble work in the fifth, Komsomol Youth, and ditto in the bombastic fugal finale, Glory. The alto and treble boys' choir also ring in with impressive verve and discipline. Solo bass Stanislaw Sulejmanow gives a solid, sensitive reading, particularly in his major solo in the third movement, Remembrance of Things Past. Sulejmanow has an unusually broad vibrato, both in pitch and period, so that it is almost suggestive of the phenomenon of "tape wow" on certain held notes - something that may cause distraction in some listeners (he is outstanding as the soloist in Jurowski's more recent blockbuster performance of Shostakovich's cantata Execution of Stepan Razin, to be reviewed next issue). Tenor Wladimir Kasatschuk is both expressive and idiomatically on target in his featured solo in the sixth movement, Future Stroll. The placement of the various choruses, soloists and orchestra provide a broadly spacious, well-balanced sound that situates the listener directly in the conductor's podium - a nice place to be in the opulent sonority of these happy, untroubled waters. If superficial music requires profound interpretation to sound like anything, Song of the Forests has its requisite in Michail Jurowski.

The fourteen-minute Sun Shines Over Our Motherland offers the same interpretive invitations as its abovementioned companion and enjoys a similar set of performing attributes. Jurowski is not as daring as Yurlov in stepping up the tempo in the central fast section, yet he provides a lively, well-judged performance with a beautifully controlled and recorded complement of forces. Nothing more, nothing less could be asked for in this parallel pair of patriotic potboilers.

It is a pity that Shostakovich's mutinously experimental opera, The Nose, has been such a stranger to stage and studio, and as much a pity that the extracted suite has remained equally as obscure. Nose represents the ne plus ultra of Shostakovich's early, off-centred theatrical anarchism, and the suite, at 25 minutes length, offers a concentrated cross-section of this rebelliously madcap phase of the composer's career. The composer assembled the 7-part suite in 1930, shortly after the opera's scandalous première in January that year.

The Nose Suite's three contained vocal numbers seem arbitrarily chosen, as the omission of any number of other arias from the opera - especially the one sung with nose pinched - seems hard to justify. The four instrumental numbers, on the other hand, are indispensable. They include the infamous all-percussion interlude from Act I (an idea seemingly influenced by Alexander Tcherepnin's 1927 First Symphony), the opening Overture and a final Galop, both taken from Act I. The centrepiece and longest movement of the suite is the instrumental interlude from Act II. That movement is a microcosm of the just-completed Second Symphony, a monolithic arch that gradually builds contrapuntal density toward a frantic climax, then winding its way down to the murmurings of the opening pages.

Rozhdestvensky's 1975 recording of the complete opera (reissued in 1998 on BMG 74321 60319 2; reviewed in DSCH No. 11) has an interpretive panache that drives the work forward with all intended raw satire and modernist electricity. Comparatively, Jurowski's tempos are less driven and lack the swagger of the inimitable Rozhdestvensky.

Yet the superb, exacting musicianship of Jurowski's players and their engaging vitality keep this performance of the suite quite alive. The greatest tempo difference between the two conductors occurs in the Act II interlude, which Rozhdestvensky takes at 4:39 compared to Jurowski's 6:31. The latter performance brings an effective symphonic heft, even a frightening intensity, to this number, that the elder conductor's more nonchalant tempos overlook..

Bass Stanislaw Sulejmanow simply does not have the comico-dramatic flexibility required for a work as theatrically loaded as Nose. No matter that the part is written for baritone, his rendering of Kovalov's Aria is a bit stiff, his concluding crocodile tears positively wooden. Sulejmanow's declamatory style is more effective in the mournful Kovalov's Monologue, which he renders with much feeling. Tenor Vladimir Kasatschuk falls effortlessly into the satiric spirit of the work in his rendition of Ivan's Song, zanily adorned with balalaika and flexatone.

A major plus of the new recording is the sonic clarity of the engineering and the close, radial distribution of the instrumental ensemble around the listener. The rapid-fire rhythmic exchanges in the all-percussion interlude come across with particular vividness, as do the flashpoint instrumental relays of the delightfully offbeat Overture.

There is no mention in the notes of where the individual numbers in the suite fall into Nose's story, and the attendant copyright siege apparently prevents any portion of the libretto from being printed. Alas, patience may one day pay off. The texts to the Dolmatovsky-inspired works, however, appear in full in both German and English. How lucky can we get?!

Jurowski once again assembles a colourful, finely crafted program that for many will fill in some noteworthy gaps in the Shostakovich library.

Louis Blois
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DSCH No. 13.
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