Shostakovich Symphonies

[338]

Agreed.It was very slow in places but I must listen again to make up my mind as to whether I liked the performance or not.I was listening in HD sound and I thought the sound quality was very good until 10 minutes or so from the end when the sound disapeared completely.Luckily I was recording it from my FM tuner as well so was able to catch up later.

[Roehre]

Okay. Here are the symphonies in DSCH 15. Some are quotations and some just remind me of a symphony. Taking liberties with some of them!

1 Mvt 3 climax 15 Mvt 2 funeral march

2 That bit with the high strings then chorus 15 Mvt 2 high strings 12 note tune just before funeral march

3 ?
4 Mvt 1 Development 15 Mvt 1 Development

5 Mvt 3 Climax 15 Mvt 4 just before the climax of 7

6 End of mvt 3 15 Mvt 1 near start and near end

7 Mvt 1 Main march 15 Mvt 4 Development in the base then the huge climax

8 Mvt 1 Start of development first 3 notes 15 Mvt 2 near end

9 Mvt 1 start 15 Mvt 3 Trio

10 DSCH 15 Mvt 3 Trio-just after the above!

11 Mvt 4 silly bit 15 Mvt 3 tune – in the manner of

12 ?

13 Mvt 3 woodblock 15 Mvt 2 woodblock

14 as above 15 as above

15 Mvt 1 start 15 Mvt 4 at the end!

Cello Concerto no.1 start 15 Mvt 1 - in the manner of

Cello Concerto no.2 end/ 4 Mvt 2 end 15 end




Can’t find one for 12. But it’s in exactly the same order! (These are the only 2 symphonies in this order)


3VS

thanks for this summary, 3VS, very interesting.

It raises however an interesting question: are all these quotes actually meant as such, or are they part of DSCH's musical language/style?

I come to this, as there are many quotes of own (only to mention String quartet 8) and other composers' works (Rossini, Wagner in S15, but Beethoven i.a. in the viola sonata) to be found in his output which were doubtlessly conciously made. In this symphony I got the feeling that many -but possibly not all- of the "quotes" you listed are mere (subconcious) allusions, and as such a part of DSCH's musical thinking.

[Nick Armstrong]

Okay. Here are the symphonies in DSCH 15. Some are quotations and some just remind me of a symphony. Taking liberties with some of them!

1 Mvt 3 climax 15 Mvt 2 funeral march

2 That bit with the high strings then chorus 15 Mvt 2 high strings 12 note tune just before funeral march

3 ?
4 Mvt 1 Development 15 Mvt 1 Development

5 Mvt 3 Climax 15 Mvt 4 just before the climax of 7

6 End of mvt 3 15 Mvt 1 near start and near end

7 Mvt 1 Main march 15 Mvt 4 Development in the base then the huge climax

8 Mvt 1 Start of development first 3 notes 15 Mvt 2 near end

9 Mvt 1 start 15 Mvt 3 Trio

10 DSCH 15 Mvt 3 Trio-just after the above!

11 Mvt 4 silly bit 15 Mvt 3 tune – in the manner of

12 ?

13 Mvt 3 woodblock 15 Mvt 2 woodblock

14 as above 15 as above

15 Mvt 1 start 15 Mvt 4 at the end!

Cello Concerto no.1 start 15 Mvt 1 - in the manner of

Cello Concerto no.2 end/ 4 Mvt 2 end 15 end




Can’t find one for 12. But it’s in exactly the same order! (These are the only 2 symphonies in this order)


3VS

Cooo lummee 3VS, I missed this: cracking stuff that will repay study!!!

Many thanks for this

[Petrushka]

Cooo lummee 3VS, I missed this: cracking stuff that will repay study!!!

Many thanks for this

Yes, many thanks from me too. 3VS. I'll sit down with a recording and play 'spot the quote'.

[Simon B]

I must catch up with the Petrenko 7 from the other night.

At over 80 minutes it's quite the slowest performance I have ever heard! I suspect Naxos will be telling him to speed up a bit for the recording.

Of the 15 live Shostakovich 7s I can remember attending (conductors including Gergiev, Masur, Jurowski, Wigglesworth, Sinaisky, Downes etc) only the multiple Downes/BBCPO performances surpassed this one.

The tempi were on the steady side, but it certainly didn't feel slow at the time. Admittedly, a broadcast can leave a very different impression. Steadiness was a feature in common with Downes' interpretation.

The key (all IMO obviously) to the infamous march in Mvt 1 isn't to hurtle through it at breakneck speed (the resort of many, particularly habitual speed-merchant Jarvi snr - so fast on his Chandos/RSNO recording that the 3 snare drummers ultimately fall over themselves in the headlong rush). Downes and Petrenko both took/take a similar approach - an implacably steady tempo with great attention to phrasing, note-lengths, emphasis and timbre. This makes it much more interesting, self-satirising and ultimately horrifying than the usual undifferentiated bash-through.

Other conductors try to deal with the longeurs of the inner movements (particularly II) by adopting a relatively brisk tempo and getting them over with. While the more probing approach of Downes and Petrenko doesn't quite succeed in dispelling the impression that some editing wouldn't have hurt, I still find fewer passages where my attention wanders.

Likewise, the very ending. No amount of brass (often inadequately blasted out anyway) can make up for over-brisk blandness. In similar vein to the exceptionally slow and grand apotheoisis to the live LPO/Tennstedt Mahler 2, the blazing slow grandeur is justified in Downes and Petrenko by being at the end of an arc encompassing all that has come before.

[As a minor detail which many perhaps wouldn't notice, I don't understand why the last few (fff) cymbal clashes were left out by the RLPO, apparently deliberately, especially as with timps +7 there should have been one player with nothing to do - unless they had 4 rather than 3 snare drums on the last chord. I wasn't looking as I didn't want to be distracted from watching the brass blowing their collective lungs out and Neil Hitt living up to his name on timps! An minor but odd blemish...]

The Liverpool audience is rather more in the habit of standing ovations than most - but this time I thought it justified and joined in. As a live performance, one to remember.

[Flosshilde]

Thanks, SimonB, for these comments, especially about the march in movt 1, It was when the symphony reached this point that I began to think that my prjudices about Shostakovitch's symphonies were justified. However, I'll listen again with your comments in mind.

[amateur51]

Of the 15 live Shostakovich 7s I can remember attending (conductors including Gergiev, Masur, Jurowski, Wigglesworth, Sinaisky, Downes etc) only the multiple Downes/BBCPO performances surpassed this one.

The tempi were on the steady side, but it certainly didn't feel slow at the time. Admittedly, a broadcast can leave a very different impression. Steadiness was a feature in common with Downes' interpretation.

The key (all IMO obviously) to the infamous march in Mvt 1 isn't to hurtle through it at breakneck speed (the resort of many, particularly habitual speed-merchant Jarvi snr - so fast on his Chandos/RSNO recording that the 3 snare drummers ultimately fall over themselves in the headlong rush). Downes and Petrenko both took/take a similar approach - an implacably steady tempo with great attention to phrasing, note-lengths, emphasis and timbre. This makes it much more interesting, self-satirising and ultimately horrifying than the usual undifferentiated bash-through.

Other conductors try to deal with the longeurs of the inner movements (particularly II) by adopting a relatively brisk tempo and getting them over with. While the more probing approach of Downes and Petrenko doesn't quite succeed in dispelling the impression that some editing wouldn't have hurt, I still find fewer passages where my attention wanders.

Likewise, the very ending. No amount of brass (often inadequately blasted out anyway) can make up for over-brisk blandness. In similar vein to the exceptionally slow and grand apotheoisis to the live LPO/Tennstedt Mahler 2, the blazing slow grandeur is justified in Downes and Petrenko by being at the end of an arc encompassing all that has come before.

[As a minor detail which many perhaps wouldn't notice, I don't understand why the last few (fff) cymbal clashes were left out by the RLPO, apparently deliberately, especially as with timps +6 there should have been one player with nothing to do - unless they had 4 rather than 3 snare drums on the last chord. I wasn't looking as I didn't want to be distracted from watching the brass blowing their collective lungs out and Neil Hitt living up to his name on timps! An minor but odd blemish...]

The Liverpool audience is rather more in the habit of standing ovations than most - but this time I thought it justified and joined in. As a live performance, one to remember.

An outstanding review, SimonB! - many thanks

[Simon B]

Thanks, SimonB, for these comments, especially about the march in movt 1, It was when the symphony reached this point that I began to think that my prjudices about Shostakovitch's symphonies were justified. However, I'll listen again with your comments in mind

I can see why this of all passages might be prejudice confirming - and if you don't like it you don't like it. Mind you, I don't think anyone is meant to "like" this and similar passages in Shostakovich as such. Finding it repellent would, in this instance, perhaps be the composer's intention.

In general, the more superficially rhetorical/bombastic Shostakovich is not something I have much interest in listening to on recordings. Saying that live is the "only" way to hear this piece is a bit hyperbolic - but approximately true for me. That effect of that march as heard live (or from within the orchestra - I found it completely dominated of my consciousness, though I suppose playing any kind of ostinato tends to do that) is ultimately extreme - at least when it's played like the RLPO did.

The only reaction I've sometimes seen to it that completely baffles me is the one that suggests enjoyment of a jaunty little tune. This is understandable at first, but when it continues into enjoyment of a jaunty but really quite heavily orchestrated (!) tune I just can't conceive how this could be. Only the passage in the 11th Symphony nominally associated with the Palace Square Massacre is more chilling...

[jayne lee wilson]

I'm a bit perplexed about your implicit strictly-defined category of minimalism here...

"The Chairman Dances" is subtitled "foxtrot for orchestra" and it proceeds to layer several swingingly memorable dance and big-band tunes over a fairly unvarying rhythmic pulse, and doesn't adventure very far harmonically either - so like many a good foxtrot, it could well be heard as falling within the broad category of minimalism, and right from the outset has a minimalist "feel" to it in building the momentum of the piece that way.

So I'm intrigued by Bryn and Flossie - why do you exclude TCD so completely from description as minimalist? Isn't it indeed possible to look back at, say, Sibelius and hear at the very least, a kind of proto-minimalism in say, Nightride and Sunrise, or the 2nd movement of the 3rd symphony? (Don't think I'd include Schubert 9 though...)

I'm genuinely keen to know what you see as minimalist, and what you don't...

(Although I'm even more puzzled why someone doesn't enjoy Adams' Foxtrot!)

So why did you put the 'TCD' into a 'minimalist' compartment (which it doesn't belong in anyway)? Sounds like you were floundering around trying to find a justification for not liking it

[jayne lee wilson]

Simon B's made some insightful points here (though I can't see why the meaning of the "bombastic" or "rhetorical" music in DSCH should feel so different as live or recorded - and aren't these passages almost always satirical of those assumptions of power?);

I would just add that adversely critical commentary about the Leningrad always seems to forget that the first movement's march is part of a larger structure, one which places the simplicity, pomposity, and finally the destructive violence of that march in a tragic human context. The listener has to grasp the meaning of the whole half-hour, from the broad socialist-realist sweep of the introduction, through the march (scarcely unvarying itself) to the true tragic grandeur of the climax and the ashen, all-passion-and-life-spent coda. The quiet recurrence of the side drum at the movement's close is perhaps the most chilling moment of all, even in its very nonchalance: the surviving soldiers whistle as they pass on to the next battlefield.

So there's more layered meaning in there than a repulsed reaction to the "infamous" march might allow you to see. And there are still three more movements to expound on all of that! No wonder it's been a subject of debate for so long...

Thanks, SimonB, for these comments, especially about the march in movt 1, It was when the symphony reached this point that I began to think that my prjudices about Shostakovitch's symphonies were justified. However, I'll listen again with your comments in mind.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I agree wholeheartedly with the positive comments about Petrenko's Leningrad, and my thanks to SimonB, too. This is the first time I've been so convinced by the work and I think the measured pacing made this possible: the March had a sense of inexorability about it that "justified" the repetitive nature of the tune, and put its "destructive violence" into a genuinely symphonic context. This is what I've missed in performances I've heard (or "overheard") before. Petrenko understood the depths of the work and the architecture of its rhetoric and coaxed his players into delivering his (and the composer's) vision.

In contrast, did anyone hear Gergiev's No8 on Friday afternoon. It got a good introduction from Penny Gore, but the actual performance didn't do much for me: the climaxes sounded bathetic and "hammy" and I prefer the greater "bite" that Mravinsky and Haitink get from the strings in the second scherzo. Anyone dis/agree?

[gedsmk]

Yes, Petrenko's is an amazing reading of the Leningrad, and I've just listened to it again through in its entirety, but this thread having alerted me - why oh why were the last four cymbal crashes omitted? Certainly not as egregious as Jurowski's fatal G.P. between movements 5 and 6 of Mahler's 3rd in the RFH last year, but still - was this an artistic excision or purely a matter of logistics? Surely they could have brought in a willing p. t. percussionist?

[amateur51]

There's a performance of Shostakovich symphony no 15 on Tuesday 24 January 2012, conducted by Vassily Sinaisky

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b019m4pj

[Simon B]

And I've just turned R3 on at random to find a broadcast of the the 11th ongoing. This is also Sinaisky and the BBCPO in another excellent performance I went to in Manchester in November.

Pity the R3 broadcast has wholly excessive dynamic compression which just crushed any sense of the icy power out of the Palace Square Massacre "scene" - Rob Lea's thunderous bass drum survived, but every thing else seemed to be obliterated behind it which is in no way how it was in reality. Why are so many R3 broadcasts being compromised in this way recently?

As will become apparent, ordinary bass-bells rather than the massive orchestral church bells favoured by Bychkov and Petrenko in their recent Proms and Festival Hall performances were used at the end of the Tocsin which lessened the impact a bit. Other than that, most impressive.

And as I type - again the orchestra disappearing off into the far distance just because there's a powerful bass drum entry. Very poor.

[Simon B]

What a piece. But on reflection, maybe that was a BBC studio recording made at the same time as the concert - or the closing bars had been re-recorded as there was no applause and the last cymbal entry was in the wrong place which didn't happen in the concert. Also, the close seemed to escape the drastically conspicuous dynamic recessing applied earlier on.

Presumably this will be on listen again for a week. Worth hearing IMO despite the dodgy sonics.