Written With The Heart's Blood
Chamber Symphony, Op. 110a (arr. Rudolf Barshai), Two Pieces for String Octet, Op. 11, Symphony for Strings, Op. 118a (arr. of String Quartet No. 10 by Rudolf Barshai).
Stuart Canin, New Century Chamber Orchestra.
New Albion NA 088 CD. DDD. TT 56:29.

The gory title scrawled in arterial red across the front of the New Albion album is a quote from American poet Carl Sandburg describing Shostakovich's music. According to music director Stuart Canin, this and the dedication of the Eighth Quartet "to the memory of the victims of fascism and war" inspired his team's approach to the pieces on this disc. Presumably unaware of Shostakovich's suicidal state while writing the Eighth Quartet, Canin suggests that "the recurring motifs of hope and renewal show that Shostakovich was ever a human being, always hopeful of an end to dark times." Not surprisingly, then, the emphasis here is on the up-front, public potential of Op. 110a.

There is no denying the enthusiasm that this San Francisco Bay area ensemble displays for the work; one gets a palpable sense that they have only recently discovered it. Emote they do. This comes, though, at the price of depth. Local effects are exploited without clear justification in terms of an overall framework, such as the showily exaggerated crescendo at fig. 18/0:38 in the second movement. Louder passages sometimes sound woolly, due to excessively reverberant church acoustics.

The New Century Orchestra players are more persuasive in the rarely-recorded Pieces for Octet, written while Shostakovich was composing his First Symphony. The short Prelude and Scherzo that make up Op. 11 are thematically unrelated to each other, but each is tightly argued. The polystylistic Prelude is a reverie that hearkens back to less-troubled musical forms, whereas the self-consciously demonic Scherzo displays Shostakovich's successful integration of avant-garde techniques. Both receive high-voltage renditions, with very fine violin work.

Barshai's string orchestra arrangement of Quartet No. 10 is intrinsically easier to interpret convincingly than is Op. 110a, as Op. 118 is arguably the most symphonic of the fifteen quartets. Consequently, I did not find the Op. 118a performance to be as unsatisfying as the one given to Op. 110a, even though it is cast from the same mould. The orchestra muscles through the most technically challenging sections without apparent difficulty, and the violent second movement is delivered with impressive impact. The anodyne presentation of the slow third movement is quite moving, while the outer movements are served up competently.

Even so, there is far more to this music than the surface emotion on show here. I imagine that these cathartic performances will appeal to uninitiated buyers who find the album's New Age presentation attractive rather than off-putting, and anyone wanting the Pieces for Octet can buy with confidence. The Chamber Symphonies, however, supply resolutions that are too easily won and that are, at least in the case of Op. 110a, surely illusory.

W. Mark Roberts
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DSCH No. 9.
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