Open Writing

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Dmitri Shostakovich (1906 – 1975)

The Symphonies (Complete) –
Nos. 1, 2 “To October”, 3 “First of May”, 4, 5, 6, 7 “Leningrad”, 8, 9, 10, 11 “The Year 1905", 12 “The Year 1917" (“To the Memory of Lenin”), 13 “Babi Yar”, 14, 15.
WDR Symphony Orchestra/Rudolf Barshai, with WDR Chorus (Nos. 2, 3), Sergei Aleksashkin (bass, No. 13), Moscow Choral Academy (No. 13), Alla Simoni (sop., No. 14), Vladimir Vaneev (bass, No. 14)
Brilliant Classics 6324-1/11, Box of 11 CDs in individual cardboard sleeves, with booklet.
Recorded at Philharmonie, Koln, 10/94 (Nos. 1, 3), 1/95 (No. 2), 4/96 and 10/96 (No. 4), 7/95 and 4/96 (No. 5), 10/95 (No. 6), 9/92 (No. 7), 3/94 and 10/95 (No. 8), 7/95, 9/95 and 4/96 (No. 9), 10/96 (No. 10), 5/99 (No. 11), 9/95 (No. 12), 9/00 (No. 13), Sometime in 1999/2000 (No. 14), 6/98 (No. 15)
[670 mins.]

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How often do we start out to do one thing, with a perfectly plain and straightforward objective firmly in mind, only to find that we end up doing something entirely different? This started out as a simple review. Before I knew where I was “at”, I’d got myself rather swept up in it all, but by that time it seemed better to go on than start again! It ended up as what is presented below, a series of dissertations of such proportions that I’ve had to index it. Follow the usual web thingy, where you just “click on the link to get to the bit you want”. Maybe you’d prefer to print it out to “read in bed”? Quite apart from its soporific potential, be warned that you’ll need in excess of 40 A4 sheets. I’m just thankful that Rob asked me to do the Shostakovich symphonies, and not the complete Haydn set!

Such is the damage that the Soviet regime wreaked that, even now, much of Shostakovich’s history remains contentious. There is no absolute authority, and I certainly make no claims to be even a “relative authority”, regardless of the (false) impression endowed by the appearance of my words in print. Hence, even statements of “fact” that I make are open to argument. My opinions (of which there are plenty) are my own, and I would welcome argument with arms open wide. Of course, to argue the toss requires not only you to have read my “dissertations”, but also me to have written stimulating prose. There’s only one way to find out. So, off you go then!

Overture

You pays your money and you takes your choice – this set comes packaged in either standard individual jewel-cases or cardboard sleeves. My copy is the latter. I rather like it. It’s such a neat little box. At just under an inch and a quarter thick (a nadge over three centimetres to the Euro-orientated), it belies the sheer magnitude of its contents. Just to listen through it a couple of times equates to a full three days’ work. Alright, it may be far more fun than working, but it’s still a daunting prospect. It’s only now, faced with it myself, that I start to properly appreciate the sheer effort involved in reviewing complete cycles. Suddenly humbled, I take off my hat (well, cloth cap) to those reviewers who scale heights like the Haydn Symphonies, the Mozart Edition or that Everest of oeuvres, the complete works of J. S. Bach – and somehow survive to tell the tale.

Shostakovich’s symphonies, even in their entirety, are hardly in the same league when it comes to plain, old-fashioned bulk. However, in the “salutary experience” stakes, even one Shostakovich symphony can take some swallowing, to the extent that sitting down and scoffing the lot in a single, mightily protracted gulp brings on not indigestion but another hot flush of humility. Let’s face it, even Mahler felt that three hammer blows were enough to finish him off, so what chance does a mere mortal have when repeatedly thumped in the ribs through fifteen gruelling rounds?

Sure, I’ve watched the documentaries, and I’ve read the books (some of them). But working my way through all the symphonies, one after the other, convinced me with an ear-searing immediacy that no one symphony on its own can punch home how appallingly fearful Shostakovich’s life was. That he managed to produce anything at all under such conditions is remarkable, that he produced so much is amazing, and that he somehow maintained his individuality – along with the wit to express it – under a regime that habitually murdered individualists simply beggars belief. You’d really have to have a heart of stone to listen to these symphonies from first to last and emerge at the far end entirely unscathed.

This starts to look like it has the makings of a harrowing write-up. Yet again I am humbled. How would I – or you, for that matter – have got on, had I (or you) been in his place? “First train to the salt mines” springs to mind. Yet Shostakovich not only maintained his marbles intact, but also (and don’t ask me how!) managed to hang on to his sense of humour. Whether wry, ironic, mordant, or uninhibitedly uproarious, the jester in him is irrepressible: no matter how dire things became, Shostakovich never seemed to let them get him down for long. Surely, he must be one of the few truly heroic figures in history, and prime material for a high-class, big-budget “bio-pic”. I sometimes try to imagine what it would have been like, if Eamonn Andrews had ever intoned the words “Dmitri Shostakovich, this is yurr loif!” (especially compared to some of the barely-out-of-nappies dross that Michael Aspel has to contend with these days).

Mind you, we might reasonably be tempted to ask, “Which life?” There are at least two versions of the tale (plus more variants than I’ve had hot dinners). In its simplest terms, this depends largely on whether or not you believe Solomon Volkov’s Testimony. If you don’t, you have to try to extricate the “truth” from the “official” Soviet history, which is not easy (given that there are lies, damned lies, statistics, and “official” Soviet history!). Even now, with both Berlin Wall and USSR dead and buried, and much more open access to information, we would still seem to be a long way from the real truth of the matter. The one thing that’s emerging unequivocally (for now, anyway!) is that Volkov’s view is “correct”, if not altogether then at least in principle – and that’s shocking enough in itself. In what follows, I’m sure it goes without saying that I am necessarily expressing what I personally have come to believe regarding Shostakovich’s life and motivations. As things stand, the “truth” is something that we each must decide for ourselves.

Anyway, as I was saying, it’s such a neat little box, a decently robust container for the 11 CDs. Unfortunately, the individual cardboard sleeves are a little too robust, or rather they are a tad too snug-fitting – getting a disc out can be a right tussle. Companies especially please note! The sleeve should be a loose enough fit so that, by holding it between the fingers and thumb of one hand and gently squidging it, the disc will slip out edgewise onto the other hand, neatly caught through the spindle-hole by a middle finger. I soon learnt to immediately apply the less than ideal remedy of easing each sleeve to give its resident CD a bit more elbow room. This is a serious complaint, as I found that the rim of CD3 was marked all around its circumference, rendering the end of the Sixth Symphony’s middle movement unplayable. I managed to salvage it, but the procedure – involving diligent polishing with a very soft cloth and a minute drop of something like “Silvo” – is hair-raisingly risky even if you’re confident that you know what you’re doing. Of course, as a consumer you would just demand a replacement, but then that may be the same! You would in any case be well advised to store the CDs in their slip-cases “upside down”, with the label side facing the overlapping join in the cardboard. The real point, though, is that this simply should not be a problem in the first place.

On a brighter note, I give full marks for the very striking art-work! As is usual, both box and booklet bear the same illustration but each sleeve, following the same style, bears a different illustration. The CDs themselves all copy the CD1 sleeve illustration. The 28-page booklet contains 28 pages of English, believe it or not! I wonder if copies distributed in (say) Germany are similarly graced with all-German booklets? I sincerely hope so. Four pages are, quite rightly, devoted to a profile of Rudolf Barshai, and either one or two pages to each symphony. The former is by Bernd Feuchtner, the latter by David Doughty who deftly runs a narrative thread of historical context through his informative discussions of the symphonies. Now, it’s all starting to look dangerously like a stonking good buy for “newcomers”, so I should advise such folk that prior knowledge is assumed. This is fair enough: there are lots of leads for the interested to follow up and, well, we don’t want everything dished up on a plate, pre-chewed or (heaven forbid!) pre-digested, do we?

Even the mildly-initiated will be attracted by the name of Rudolf Barshai. He’s been around a bit, and in lots of the right places. A one-time composition student and performing colleague of Shostakovich, he’s perhaps generally best known for his string orchestral arrangement of the latter’s Eighth String Quartet, but between the sheets of this web site he also gained some reflected notoriety as conductor of that recording of Mahler’s Fifth, our review of which caused such a kerfuffle a while back [see http://www.musicweb.uk.net/classrev/2001/Apr01/Mahler5.htm for the review and a supporting article by Norman LeBrecht]. His performing credentials are substantial right where it counts: creator of the Moscow Chamber Orchestra, conductor of the first performance of Shostakovich’s Fourteenth Symphony in 1969 and, as a viola-player of considerable standing, founder member of both the Borodin and Tchaikovsky string quartets. This chap would seem to be well acquainted with all the necessary personal onions.

With everything else about the booklet being ship-shape and Bristol-fashion, it’s a shame that a few words about the orchestra couldn’t have been included, seeing as the WDRSO is hardly a household name. In a sudden fit of altruism, I chased up the WDRSO website to get some information for you. It’s in German, so I had to resort to Google’s “translate-a-page” service, whence it becomes my solemn and bounden duty to pass on to you these priceless gems, verbatim seeing as I don’t think that I dare risk rendering them into colloquial English. This orchestra “developed 1947 in the northwestGerman broadcast at that time (NWDR) and belongs today to the West German broadcast”, and “it is not only the ‘house orchestra’ of the WDR for radio and television productions, but presents itself also with numerous concerts in the Cologne Philharmonic Concert Hall and in the whole transmission area”. In addition, “its outstanding call it acquired itself in co-operation with the principal conductors Christoph of Dohnányi, Zdenek Macal, Hiroshi Wakasugi, Gary Bertini and Hans Vonk”. I hope you’re following this, because there’s a bit more yet: “as considerable guest conductors stood as Claudio Abbado, Karl Boehm, Fritz shrubs, Herbert of Karajan, Erich nuthatch, petrol Klemperer, Lorin Maazel, Sir André Previn, Zubin Mehta, Sir George Solti and Guenter wall at the desk of the orchestra”. In terms of repertoire, I should mention that “apart from the care of the classical-romantic repertoire the WDR Sinfonieorchester Cologne made itself 20 particularly by its interpretations of the music. Century a name. Luciano Berio, Hans's Werner Henze, Mauricio Kagel, Krzysztof Penderecki, Igor Strawinskij, Karl Heinz stick living and Bernd Alois Carpenter belong to the contemporary composers, who specified their works – to a large extent order compositions of the WDR – with the WDR Sinfonieorchester Cologne”.

Apart from now being all too well aware of the German for “shrubs”, “nuthatch”, “petrol” (?), “stick”, “living” and “carpenter”, I gather (or I think I do) that the WDRSO is a top-notch provincial orchestra on a par with (say) the UK’s BBC Philharmonic. My mouth waters at the prospect: I don’t know about you, but I generally find such orchestras far more exciting than any of the pan-global mega-orchestras. For a start, they often retain some local “flavour”, and being somehow less exalted and hence nearer the gut-level ground, they seem to be more attuned to what it means to make real music for real people, don’t you think? Well, in this instance, that’s exactly what we’re about to find out, so here goes . . .