Symphony No. 15 in A major, Op. 141, Cello Concerto No. 1, Op. 107.
Valéry Polyansky, Russian State Symphony Orchestra, Frans Helmerson (cello).
Chandos CHAN 9550. DDD. TT 74:23.

Convincing performances of Shostakovich's most elusive symphony being few and far between, I was impatient to get this recent arrival into the player. Polyansky, a former student of Rozhdestvensky, has racked up an impressive discography with Chandos, including an ongoing expedition through the world of the little-known Alexander Grechaninov, who was active from the end of the last century through the first half of ours. Having left the Soviet Union in 1925, Grechaninov's idiom remained conservatively Russian. Polyansky's impressively played and recorded performances reveal Grechaninov to have been a fair symphonist but above all a master of choral music, weaving orchestral textures from a capella voices. That Chandos cycle includes many première recordings, and is well worth exploring.

Polyansky is also on his way through Shostakovich's orchestral output. Although his recording of the Eleventh (CHAN 9476) was a workmanlike affair, I hoped for better from his Fifteenth. Sadly, this is a pretty flat run-through. Polyansky's orchestra has the advantage of authentically Russian sound, but the musicians miss the opportunity to inject character into the many soloistic passages. The first movement comes across as curiously undifferentiated, and its wooden marionettes seem comfortable having their strings pulled.

Polyansky favours a slow pace in the remainder of the work. The tactic can be used effectively to generate an atmosphere of stunned stasis, as Kurt Sanderling and the Berlin Symphony Orchestra proved in the second movement of their Berlin Classics recording (0090432BC). Here it merely allows pressure to seep away. Polyansky actually exceeds Sanderling's already-glacial timing in the second movement by over a minute. Unlike Sanderling's unblinking tour through a nightmare from which one cannot awake, Polyansky's Adagio is altogether too insulating, with a disappointingly rounded climax.

While not as excessively slow as Sanderling in the remaining two movements, Polyansky allows them to drag as well. Everything flows too smoothly. No demons inhabit the third movement, nor does Fate have much menace in store in the finale. Vladimir Ashkenazy (Decca/London 430 277-2) wound up infinitely more tension in his march to the climax of the last movement, which in the present case comes off as more bombastic than apocalyptic. For my money, Ashkenazy and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra are the team that strips the most flesh from this symphony, exposing the cartilage and bone in every movement.

Though not as disappointing as the symphony, the First Cello Concerto does not quite manage to pull this disc into thumbs-up territory. Frans Helmerson admirably conveys the tristesse of the Moderato and Cadenza, but he tends to slur the cello's dialogue in the outer movements. The real problem here, though, lies with the balance between cello and orchestra, who seem only vaguely aware of each other's presence.

While the recording is kind to the instruments, the recording studio's ambient presence sounds very much like faint analogue hiss. One hopes for better from the other Shostakovich works in the pipeline: Symphony No. 12 and Cello Concerto No. 2 are to be released this month, and the Thirteenth Symphony is slated for October. These, plus Polyansky's new Leningrad symphony and coupling of the New Babylon film music with From Jewish Folk Poetry, are candidates for review in the Winter issue of DSCH.

W. Mark Roberts
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DSCH No. 9.
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