Essential Shostakovich Discs

[Cockney Sparrow]

However I'm very grateful for the reminder and to Beef! for pointing out it's on Qobuz

I'm sure its in this thread somewhere but I haven't found the ref to the Svetlanov 10th on Qobuz in the time available. Takes a bit of finding on Qobuz. This might help:

http://www.qobuz.com/gb-en/album/shostakovich-symphony-no-10-evgeny-svetlanov-ussr-state-academic-symphony-orchestra/0888003493483?qref=dac_7

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Surely this is nonsense. We can listen to recordings from bygone days - even as far back as the early 1900s, and wonder at the pretty dreadful sound quality. We might notice some odd performance practices, but as an impression of what audiences, including the composers, actually heard this is almost certainly not what they were used to.

Except that the recordings made by the same orchestras in the studios of western recording companies display the same aspects of tempo, balance, and timbre as on the Soviet recordings. Your own "almost certainly not what [DSCH was] used to" is surely - how shall I put it? - "a very personal view"?

Most us are aware of terrible goings on in the 1930s and 1940s, and often we rely on film from the time - black and white. Of course they were dark days, but not necessarily dark in terms of weather. Where there are colour films available, it is often quite surprising how good the weather was on some days, and how colourful some scenes were too. We should not allow our own emotions to colour "facts". Thus I believe that good musicians and composers would have been fully familiar with what a good orchestra sounded like, and would have recognised the deficiencies of recordings made at the time.

Not entirely sure what you're trying to say here, Dave - DSCH had direct access to the Leningrad Philharmonic and its conductor Yevgeny Mravinsky who rehearsed and performed the premieres of most of his orchestral works under the composer's supervision. There wasn't a "better" orchestra around in his lifetime - those instrumental sounds, those tempi, that sense of timbre and texture (whether recorded in their home concert hall by Soviet recording engineers, or in Western studios by Deutsche Grammophon, or by radio studios in their visits to the West); that was what DSCH worked with and towards. Beggur the MONO, restricted sound quality on (some of) the Soviet recordings - the tempi, balance, timbre - that's the benchmark for performers interested in reproducing (or, at the very least, "getting as close as they can to") the composer's intentions.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

We're not talking about prehistoric recordings! The Kondrashin cycle, for instance , was recorded in the 1960s while Rozhdestvensky's dates from the 1980s and the former has been remastered to splendid effect. No, it is the sound of the Soviet era orchestras that would have been in Shostakovich's mind's ear as he composed and we have that sound miraculously preserved through recordings made in his lifetime or shortly after. It's Authenticity with a capital A which is why I can't understand why some people praise the 'authenticity' of a Bach recording but are not prepared to accept the real deal when it's there with Shostakovich (and Elgar, come to that).

... and the inter-War years recordings of Strauss, Stravinsky, Sibelius.

[jayne lee wilson]

We're not talking about prehistoric recordings! The Kondrashin cycle, for instance , was recorded in the 1960s while Rozhdestvensky's dates from the 1980s and the former has been remastered to splendid effect. No, it is the sound of the Soviet era orchestras that would have been in Shostakovich's mind's ear as he composed and we have that sound miraculously preserved through recordings made in his lifetime or shortly after. It's Authenticity with a capital A which is why I can't understand why some people praise the 'authenticity' of a Bach recording but are not prepared to accept the real deal when it's there with Shostakovich (and Elgar, come to that).

Yes - as mentioned up-thread, the 2006 Kondrashin Melodiya remaster - with the stereo 4th - is excellent as is the rarer Aulos one from a few years before (Aulos just slightly sweeter & more refined but little in it). Those separate Olympia issues of the Rozh cycle sound fairly up-to-date too, unlikely to offer much sonic offence and often available cheaply secondhand....

I do have that Prague SO Cycle with Maxim-DSCH.... no time to go into it in detail today, but I recall it has a dark & gutty timbral & rhythmical character which I would take over Haitink, Bernstein or other Western pretenders any day of the week.. It's very well played and recorded, on the gloomier, faithful and sober side interpretatively though with that sharply up-tempo 15th as per his Moscow original. I'll see if I can find the Gutman review for a few comments...

Caliban - (negative) comments on Sanderling's two 15ths in #55 from me, but - have you heard Rozh, Kondrashin or Maxim-DSCH? All around 40' - 43', almost sounds like a different work. It might change your view of the symphony, really...

[Dave2002]

Except that the recordings made by the same orchestras in the studios of western recording companies display the same aspects of tempo, balance, and timbre as on the Soviet recordings. Your own "almost certainly not what [DSCH was] used to" is surely - how shall I put it? - "a very personal view"?

I have heard some really rotten recordings. My point was that Shostakovich and other composers would have heard good sound from the orchestras they heard live - no problem with that, but that they may have thought that the recordings - if they heard them - were a pale and rather poor imitation.

Also, did composers in Russia hear other orchestras? Maybe they did - but there are some interesting features of the brass departments of the Russian orchestras of the period - and do we really know for sure that that's what composers wanted, or was it simply what they were used to, and normally got?

rfg's point seemed to be (a) that he doesn't want to listen to rotten sound, and (b) that orchestras playing the same music in the US in the immediate post war period were not so far from the Russian traditions. To a considerable extent I agree with him.

[jayne lee wilson]

DaveK2 - have you heard those remasters of the Kondrashin Symphonies? Because they effected a miraculous transformation of those early 1990s Melodiya issues (the ones with the lurid primary-colour covers). The stereo 4th is scarcely recognisable as the same perfomance over the cramped, edgy mono issue.... and for me, the relationship between the sound of those orchestras (brasses especially) and the music written for them is almost symbiotic....

[Dave2002]

I'm sure its in this thread somewhere but I haven't found the ref to the Svetlanov 10th on Qobuz in the time available. Takes a bit of finding on Qobuz. This might help:
http://www.qobuz.com/gb-en/album/sho...483?qref=dac_7

Here is the famous/infamous Prom version from August 1968 on Spotify - https://play.spotify.com/album/6NYzb...tm_medium=open

I was there!

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I have heard some really rotten recordings. My point was that Shostakovich and other composers would have heard good sound from the orchestras they heard live - no problem with that, but that they may have thought that the recordings - if they heard them - were a pale and rather poor imitation.
Also, did composers in Russia hear other orchestras? Maybe they did - but there are some interesting features of the brass departments of the Russian orchestras of the period - and do we really know for sure that that's what composers wanted, or was it simply what they were used to, and normally got?
rfg's point seemed to be (a) that he doesn't want to listen to rotten sound, and (b) that orchestras playing the same music in the US in the immediate post war period were not so far from the Russian traditions. To a considerable extent I agree with him.

I'll have another go.

rfg complained about what he described as the "saxophone sound" of the brass. That particular timbre is not a result of Soviet recording deficiencies - it is also heard on the recordings made by Western recording and broadcasting companies of those same orchestras; it's the sound that the players made, the sound that DSCH heard whenever he went to orchestral concerts and whenever he worked with the preparation of the performances of his works. The speeds that Mravinsky and other Soviet performers took in their performances are not products of Soviet recording techniques (again, this is demonstrated by Western recordings of the players' Live performances). The balances between the different sections of the orchestras - as demonstrated in the Western recordings of these orchestras - is not an invention of deficient Soviet recording techniques.

If conductors and listeners wish to get an idea of what sort of timbres (instrumental sounds) tempi (speeds) and textural balances DSCH was used to hearing and expecting to hear when he went to a performance of his work, then they have to have access to these recordings made in his own lifetime.

No doubt there were many refugees from Stalinist Russia working in US and European orchestras during that period - but - as evidenced by rfg's own preference for a different Brass sound from Soviet orchestras - they didn't take at least the timbral elements of their training with them (if they had, rfg couldn't have the preference he has). And the recorded sound of CBS recordings from the '60s and '70s is often at least as "bad" as is being claimed for the Soviet-originating recorded sound for Mravinsky and/or Kondrashin.

DSCH did hear non-Soviet orchestras - Karajan and the BPO when they gave a Russian tour in the late '60s, and American orchestras when he was put on display in the States a decade earlier. (He might also have heard other performers when he visited the Edinburgh Festival in the early '60s.) As for what he was "used to, and normally got" - isn't that what all composers who work with any Musicians experience? It's precisely because it was what he was used to that we know that that was what he was imagining when he wrote for them. You seem to be suggesting that he might "really" - if only he'd known it - have preferred a different orchestra from the Leningradians?

[Dave2002]

DaveK2 - have you heard those remasters of the Kondrashin Symphonies? Because they effected a miraculous transformation of those early 1990s Melodiya issues (the ones with the lurid primary-colour covers). The stereo 4th is scarcely recognisable as the same perfomance over the cramped, edgy mono issue.... and for me, the relationship between the sound of those orchestras (brasses especially) and the music written for them is almost symbiotic....

Jayne

That's very interesting. I haven't heard much by Kondrashin. If the sound has really been improved a lot then it would be worth checking out. Are those the ones in that box which has been pointed out here a while back, or are they different remastered versions? This set - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Shostakovic...KXQDN0V4DHZEN5

Not sure if I can afford that, some other big boxes should be on their way, and budget limits (and domestic harmony) might be overstretched.

[Dave2002]

I'll have another go and you can try and shoot me down yet again. I have recordings of other pieces - for example - not by Shostakovich. One which I like is of Mahler 4 with Van Beinum. BUT there is a very distinctive oboe sound. Some would say it has "character", but others might say it is just plain horrible. Yes I know that the brass in some Russian orchestras can sound odd, and has "character" - but does it necessarily follow that composers would really want that if they could have something different? I'm not actually saying that isn't/wasn't the case with Shostakovich, but just because the same kind of sound seems to be in different recordings doesn't "prove" that's authentic. Do we know for sure that is/was the sound which Shostakovich wanted? Unless he specifically made reference to it explicitly we can't be sure.

Re CBS sound, I have found it generally to be far preferable to the sound of some early Melodiya recordings.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I can't really follow what you mean in referring to van Beinum and Mahler, Dave.

"Authentic" is precisely how the sound of the Russian brass should be described if that is what DSCH was writing for even if he might have later/earlier/contemporaneously/in his dreams have preferred a different sound. Just as, although he wrote his 'cello works for Rostropovich he might have preferred to have heard Julian Lloyd Webber playing them; or Sarah Chang to David Oistrach.

The presence of DSCH at rehearsals and performances of his orchestral works working with the Musicians of one of the greatest orchestras ever recorded means that the onus is on you to demonstrate that these are not the sort of timbres, tempi, and/or orchestral balances he preferred. Until evidence of what he really wanted is provided, and of his definite dissatisfaction with the orchestral sounds that surrounded him all his life and that he regularly worked with, the suggestion that "we can't be sure" rather sounds like wishful thinking. There's no evidence that he wouldn't have preferred his vocal works sung in Swahili by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir with Adele - we can't be sure?

[Richard Barrett]

I know that the brass in some Russian orchestras can sound odd, and has "character" - but does it necessarily follow that composers would really want that if they could have something different?

This is the same kind of argument as claiming that Mozart "would have preferred" a "modern" piano. Maybe Shostakovich "would have preferred" the sound of a Western orchestra. But that was not the sound he wrote for. If he'd been writing for a British or German or American orchestra he might well have written different music.

[Nick Armstrong]

I'm sure its in this thread somewhere but I haven't found the ref to the Svetlanov 10th on Qobuz in the time available. Takes a bit of finding on Qobuz. This might help:
http://www.qobuz.com/gb-en/album/sho...483?qref=dac_7

Cheers CS - I'd found it quite quickly in fact, just putting Svetlanov in the search box and glancing through the albums knowing what the cover looks like thanks to the HMVdigital Petrushka posted above.

Cali, Sanderling has recorded the complete cycle hasn't he?

Yes but not with the Berlin Phil - the CD I referred to was a one-off concert performance I think.

Incidentally while writing, NB all that Jurowski's performing No 15 with the LPO next Wednesday 22nd and it's live on R3

[Bryn]

Jayne

That's very interesting. I haven't heard much by Kondrashin. If the sound has really been improved a lot then it would be worth checking out. Are those the ones in that box which has been pointed out here a while back, or are they different remastered versions? This set - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Shostakovic...KXQDN0V4DHZEN5

Not sure if I can afford that, some other big boxes should be on their way, and budget limits (and domestic harmony) might be overstretched.

Not that new set with various conductors and orchestras but this one, ASIN: B000IONEZG:



or, if you can find it, the Aulos alternative remasters box.

Might be worth seeking out lossless downloads of either, which are likely to prove much cheaper. (£47.99 on QOBUZ, for instance).

[BBMmk2]

Thanks Cali. I am rather anxious to know what Forum Members think about the recordings that Andre Previn made with the LSO of DS's music? I feel that the 4th, 5th, and 8th are one of the highpoints of his tenure there.