The Music of Dmitri Shostakovich
Two Pieces (Prelude and Scherzo) for string octet, op. 11; Piano Concerto No. 1, op. 35[a]; Chamber Symphony, op. 110a.
Levon Ambartsumian, ARCO Chamber Orchestra, Damon Denton (piano)[a], Fred Mills (trumpet )[a].
Phoenix USA PHCD 151. DDD. TT 58:09.
Recorded Hugh Hodgson Hall, University of Georgia Performing Arts Center, Athens, Georgia, 2000.

Few readers will have heard of any of these performers or indeed the label, a small independent that focuses on modern repertoire. But sit up and take notice, for this is not a CD to pass by!

Relatively unknown they may be, but there is no shortage of first-rate talent in this line-up. Levon Ambartsumian is an international prize-winning former violin student and subsequent professor of the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory, where he recruited the founding members of his ARCO ("bow" in Italian) Chamber Orchestra in 1988. Since 1995, he has been Professor of Violin at the University of Georgia, Athens. The ARCO Chamber Orchestra crossed the pond with him, and now consists of a mixture of American musicians and some of Ambartsumian's Russian students.

A most successful melange it is, too, as evidenced by the appetiser on this disc. Shostakovich's Prelude and Scherzo for octet from 1924-25 is a polystylistic crystallisation of the musical impulses of the composer's youth: spiky drama, wilfully grotesque irony, and a brand of wistful nostalgia that proved too sweet to survive in his music after his travails over Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk.

The players shift skilfully between each of these moods, revelling especially in the modernistic exuberance of the Scherzo, in which they are preferable to the Ricercata de Paris (Suoni e Colori SC 53006; reviewed in DSCH No. 10). Particularly entertaining in this movement is the stereophonic spectacle of pizzicato notes ping-ponging back and forth across the stage. In the Prelude, although the Ricercata de Paris make more of the Impressionistic passages, the ARCO musicians handle the Classical stylings with greater angularity.

Next comes a First Piano Concerto that is as unlike Shostakovich's own recorded recitals as one could imagine. "Inauthentic" it may be, but I honestly cannot remember another performance of the work that I've enjoyed more! Hats off to young American pianist Damon Denton for conveying the tongue-in-cheek nature of his lines in the first movement without recourse to overt buffoonery. He is also to be commended for his expert characterisation of the divergent voices he is called upon to represent simultaneously.

Unsurprisingly, this team does not keep up in the first movement with Shostakovich's scandalously rushed recording with Samuel Samosud and the Moscow Philharmonic (Russian Disc RD CD 15 005; deleted), and is still half a minute slower than his later, saner appearance with André Cluytens and the French National Radio Orchestra (EMI CDC 7 54606 2).

However, the following Lento is where the new release is truly iconoclastic. At 8:55, the ARCO players deliver the slowest version of this movement I've encountered, drawing out events more than a minute longer than on Shostakovich's French recording, which was expansive enough. I imagine that some listeners will find this unpalatable. Yet what delirious nostalgia can be wrung from the work at this speed! It is uncanny how Ambartsumian is able to weave textures from Shostakovich's melodic threads that sound as if Khachaturian had spun them; perhaps this is the Russian-born conductor's Armenian heritage asserting itself. Veteran trumpeter Fred Mills, a former member of the Canadian Brass, is wholly supportive of this Oriental atmosphere, and the purity of the violin tone in the movement is breathtaking.

Denton impresses again in the concluding movements, teasing with the syncopations, and Mills charms with his impish handling of the final movement's main theme. Neither, however, is more delightful than the prankster strings who undermine the pontificating trumpet's central solo with whispered, pizzicato mockery.

Next, the ARCO Chamber Orchestra leap the yawning chasm that separates the concerto from Rudolf Barshai's arrangement of the Eighth Quartet. To their credit, they cross a different gulf than the one annotator Laura Tomlin maps; she informs us earnestly that Shostakovich "was overwhelmed with emotion after learning of the complete devastation of [Dresden], a result of Allied bombing raids," and that the quartet is "at the very least an extremely personal outcry against war." She appears unaware of Shostakovich's nervous breakdown and suicidal frame of mind in the weeks prior to composing the quartet, a result of being coerced into joining the Communist Party - a more probable stimulus to such a personal outcry as this.

Tomlin also muddles the Chamber Symphony's title and genesis by claiming that Barshai's transcription "was given the title of Chamber Symphony, subtitled immediately after a visit to Dresden." The missing label Tomlin alludes to is not "Chamber Symphony" but rather "To the memory of the victims of fascism and war," the official subtitle of the quartet (later transferred to the transcription), which was not suggested until two months after the Dresden visit. Her notes do not mention Shostakovich's declaration to Isaak Glikman on 19 July 1960 that "if some day I die, nobody is likely to write a work in memory of me, so I had better write one myself. The title page could carry the dedication: 'To the memory of the composer of this quartet.'"

Fortunately, Ambartsumian's direction is more adept. His Chamber Symphony is morose and restrained, opening with appropriate world-weariness. The pessimistic mood never tips over into melodrama, yet there is plenty of power on reserve: the Jewish "dance of death" theme, recycled from Piano Trio No. 2, is screeched with wide-eyed terror, and there is deadly percussive force behind the three-note cell that heralds the fourth movement.

Clearly, Ambartsumian sees this work as valedictory; the Seryozha refrain holds no reproach, and serves only as a sad farewell. More heart-rending is the cascading DSCH motif of the final movement, sounding utterly defeated.

This is one of the most uncompromising readings of the Chamber Symphony available, posing stiff competition to the similarly exhausted and exhausting version on ECM New Series' Dolorosa album by Dennis Russell Davies and the Stuttgarter Kammerorchester (ECM 1620; reviewed in DSCH No. 9).

Take note that all works receive a warm, intimate recording, and the CD has a definite volume "sweet spot" above which it sounds excessively reverberant. Keeping the dial low is particularly important in the concerto, to avoid having the piano overpower the orchestra.

If you have any level of interest in either the First Piano Concerto or the Chamber Symphony, put this disc high on your shopping list. The fine performance of the Two Pieces for Octet is icing on the cake.

W. Mark Roberts
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