Open Writing

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.]

Round-Up and Conclusions

The recording schedule of this cycle, a dozen “sittings” over a period of eight years, is astonishingly convoluted – just bend your brains around this little lot! Ten of the symphonies were set down in one “sitting” (series of sessions during a given month) each, but in the order 7, 1, 3, 2, 12, 6, 10, 15, 11, 13. The rest were done in pairs of sittings anything up to nineteen months apart, except for number 9 which surprisingly took three sittings over a nine-month period. On top of that, at least five of the sittings involved two or more different symphonies – during September 1995 they worked on numbers 5, 9, and 12, and April 1996 saw effort devoted to numbers 4, 5, 9 (the CD cases give days as well as months, but even my pernickety mind baulks at descending to that level of detail!). The logistics must have been a nightmare, but this must also mean that both players and conductor must have been thoroughly immersed, if not in the cycle as a whole, then at least in considerable breadths of it at a time. How else can we explain such noteworthy consistency over such a long period?

Regarding the recorded sound, although three producers were variously involved, all the recordings were made by the same engineer, Siegfried Spittler, who on the whole has captured the sounds fabulously, in terms of both quality and consistency. My only real reservations concerned the balance and dynamics of the Eleventh, but even this is by no means a dead loss. Moreover, all the recordings were made in the same location, Cologne’s warm-hearted Philharmonie, which makes the relatively “sore thumb” of this symphony, to say the least, a mite puzzling. Spittler has, with commendable good sense, tempered the warm acoustic by pushing his microphones forward just enough to “prick” the ambience with detail, but not so far as to detach a wholly “foreground” orchestra from a wholly “background” ambience. I have noted a couple of places where the microphones seemed to overload. These were always where Shostakovich had scored for particularly high intensity high frequencies. It’s a minus point which could have been corrected easily enough, but at least the instances are rare and short-lived, and on some equipment (I would venture) may pass entirely unnoticed.

Spittler has also given us a just balance between the sections of the WDRSO. In particular (and wonder of wonders!) the percussion, who have such an unusually important role, are given their proper due. During the writing of this “review”, I have heard comments about the percussion at the start of the Fourth, on the one hand complaining of over-dominance and on the other lamenting its lack of prominence! I guess that proves it’s about right? Equally, there have been suggestions that there’s not enough depth in the bass, to which I can only respond, “Well, adjust your tone controls then!” because I was frequently impressed at what was going on down in the basement (the bass drum sound in the fourth movement of the Thirteenth was one awe-inspiring shock to my system – alimentary that is, not audio). Overall, the sound is rich and firm, warm and detailed, and your equipment will simply love you for ever for being given the privilege of reproducing it!

The vocal contributions in Symphonies 2, 3, 13, and 14 are balanced against the orchestra with consummate care. Soloists are where they should be, “up front” but not sitting on your knee, whilst choirs are definitely where they belong, behind the orchestra but not banished to the stair-wells, and sound decently large (the ruination of more than one Berlioz Grande Messe or Te Deum has been the use of what sound like chamber choirs!). The minor choral contributions to the Second and Third are nice and vigorous, but the singing of the men of the Choral Academy Moscow in the Thirteenth is truly phenomenal, an awesome wall of sound threatening to engulf your senses! Soloists, Aleksashkin in the Thirteenth, Simoni and Vaneev in the Fourteenth, sing with immense character and scarcely a trace of the wibbly-wobblies that seem to be de rigeur these days. Also, it’s not just that they sing well, but that they “play their parts” in the acting sense with such dramatic conviction.

The WDRSO approaches what is for me the ideal band to play these symphonies. Shostakovich demands a certain quality of sound, or rather spectrum of sound qualities. In one corner is the “Russians on the razzle” quality: garish, aggressive, coarse. Somehow, the Stiff Collars and Posh Frocks of the top orchestras seem reluctant to loosen their collars (the possible disposition of the frocks I leave to your imaginations!), and instead impose something of their civilised refinement on the music. The WDRSO players on the other hand can sound as if they’re playing in grubby jeans and tatty T-shirts, and that belting out a Russian rugby song is to them the most natural thing in the world. In the opposite corner is the “dreaming in the Dacha” quality: remote, ethereal, musing. Safer ground for the SCs and PFs, but they often forget that the ground beneath their feet is still as common as muck. Enter the WDRSO to play like angels with dirty feet: they can sing as sweetly as anyone, but you won’t catch them trying to hide any of Shostakovich’s gritty accompaniments behind their velour upholstery for fear it might spoil the pristine perfection of their drawing-rooms. In spirit, the WDRSO stand shoulder to shoulder with the Leningrad Phil. of old.

It all starts in the basement: their double-basses sound truly awesome, as if their bows were primed not with horse but with mastodon hair. I lost count of the times I smiled at robust resonances, or at gruff grunts and growlings, or at rosiny runs. This extends, though less obviously, right the way up to the top of the section. They may not be the most refined string band in the world, but they are one of the most colourful and committed, capable of (and demonstrating) sweet song through to bitter acridity, shag-pile Axminster warmth through to liquid nitrogen chill, perky playfulness through to rapid-fire machine-gunning, and corpulence through to scrawniness – and all in the service of the composer.

The brass are a magnificent bunch of roughnecks, though they not once, even though they’re given ample opportunity, drowned out the rest of the orchestra. These discs contain some of the finest orchestral tuba-playing that it has been my pleasure to experience. The trombonists sound as if they were born with slides in their hands, and some of the “up top” sounds of the trumpets really do earn the epithet “golden”. Likewise the horns, who can rattle and roll it with the best of them, and still turn on a noble weight to rival the VPO. They also make up an ensemble of satisfying solemnity and tonal breadth.

Shostakovich makes rather special demands of woodwind: he expects them to be able to scream and shrill. The WDRSO woodwind are a wonderful bunch. Individually, they still possess an individuality that is increasingly rare in these days of anodyne international uniformity. Before you’ve got very far, you’ll find yourself greeting a soloist like an old pal. I became particularly chummy with the bassoon and the clarinet. But put them together, and turn up the wick, and their screaming and shrilling are electrifying, thanks not least to piccolos that could slice through thick leather like it was tissue paper.

Then there’re those important people in the kitchen. Sometimes they get a mite tangled up, and I wished, just fleetingly, that they’d done a re-take. The rest of the time (that is, most of the time), I simply luxuriated in the terrific array of sound they produced. The WDRSO tamtam has to be singled out (especially as I am a real sucker for the sound), not just for some superb, towering “swishes” but also for having such an incredibly extensive palette of sonorities. In comparison other tamtams, especially (I seem to remember) the wooly muffler wearer at the Concertgebouw, pale into “Poor Johnny One-Notes”, but this one has to be heard to be believed!

Lots of clues start to club together, leading me to suspect that these recordings were cobbled together from takes that were in fact complete live performances. It would explain much, though it would leave us with the probably unanswerable question of “how did they keep the audience so bloody quiet”? At rock bottom, it doesn’t matter, except that (again) it highlights the consistency of performance, which is worth infinitely more than the asking price of a few fluffs.

Of course, in all this I’m not forgetting Barshai, who is ultimately responsible for everything. For every single symphony there will be someone who will point to another recording which is “better”. It’s arguable that some of the performances yield nothing to the competition. Numbers 1, 6, 9 and 13 went straight to the top of my list, and it’ll take a real blinder to topple Barshai’s number 14 (I haven’t heard his earlier one – yet!). Yet, the rest of them are at least contenders, barring only number 11, not on account of its performance but of its comparatively sub-standard recording balance. Even taken individually that’s impressive. But there is more, much more.

Looking at this set as a whole, there is something very special indeed, as you can gather from the way I got just a bit carried away in the above. That’s not a facetious remark (not entirely, anyway). If you have read my dissertation on even one symphony, you may have noticed that while I was talking about the performance, I tended to drift back to discussion of the music. I had based my opinions and impressions on not one but several auditions of each work. The upshot was that I became so immersed in the experience that the distinction between the music that Shostakovich wrote and the music that Barshai made became blurred. Work and interpretation melded in my mind. But this clarified my judgement, rather than clouded it. The latter wasn’t likely because I was aware of what was happening. Consequently, much of what I said about the music was in fact equally a comment on Barshai’s performance.

It need hardly be said, but I’ll say it anyway, particularly as after this somebody, somewhere is sure to brand me as a fawning and undiscerning “Barshai groupie”. There are two broad approaches to these works, either to go completely OTT, or to play them with some degree of circumspection. There are risks either way. In maximising physical excitement, a conductor at best runs the risk of drowning the real import of the music under a flood of virtuosic brownie-points, and at worst erects a spectacular arboreal facade to cover the fact that his forest is devoid of wood. On the other hand, a performance that on initial exposure seems relatively dull will be reported as such by critics, who usually have deadlines that preclude the luxury of extended (and intensive!) exposure. The danger is that babies may be evicted along with the bathwater. Having enjoyed the aforementioned luxury in abundance, my feeling is that Barshai, whose performances are firmly in the latter camp, is much more a “baby” than he is “bathwater”. He has so thoroughly understood these symphonies that if I were told that on a hot day he sweated Shostakovich through his very pores, I’d very likely believe it. His understanding encompasses each symphony both as a whole and as an integral part of the entire cycle, and within his sure grasp of the architecture he more or less unerringly gives each moment its contextual due. However great the temptation, no one climax is ever allowed to exceed its proper place in the larger picture. For me, that creates a far greater impact overall than any consistently high-octane performance.

This set is such a towering achievement that I’m sorely tempted to suggest it rivals the Decca Ring Cycle as some sort of “gramophone classic”. It’s one of those few, I might say definitive, complete sets that everyone should have on the shelf. This is high praise indeed, and you would be right to wonder whether I am myself going OTT! Well, I can only affirm that I wouldn’t say it if I didn’t sincerely believe that Barshai thoroughly deserves it. However, after all the brain-bruising listening, I find that I have to end a mite incongruously on a couple of mundane economic notes. Firstly, if you must pick and choose, these recordings are being issued as individual discs by Regis. Secondly, dare I complain about the lack of texts and translations, or a couple of barely half-full discs, when we’re being asked to stump up the best part of twenty five pounds sterling to own a copy? I ask this because, if you don’t believe what I’ve said about it, that’s what it’s going to cost you to prove me wrong.

If you’ve a Ph.D. in Shostakovich, or are still wearing your “L” plates, this is utterly essential listening – but be warned, you may have to mortgage the rabbit-hutch to afford it.