Shostakovich: which one is your favourite amongst his works?

[EdgeleyRob]

Frankly, I'm a bit baffled by all this. The First Symphony seems to me to have all the Shostakovich fingerprints, pointing towards the later works. Many of the themes are very similar to those found in the film music which he started writing a little later on. It may have been a student work, but it's still to my mind a greater achievement than say, Prokofiev's First Piano Concerto written under similar circumstances.

Agreed,what a strange direction this thread has taken.

OT, 7th Symphony and 7th String Quartet for me.

[makropulos]

Agreed,what a strange direction this thread has taken.

OT, 7th Symphony and 7th String Quartet for me.

Ah - back to the original question. For me, it's the 13th Symphony, by some distance. Then the 10th.

[ahinton]

Exactly.
And regarding DSCH "Moral Standards": He worked as best he could under a terribly repressive system to save many people from destruction (most famously Weinberg), and in doing so frequently placed himself in a potentially dangerous path. The issue of his relationship to the Party is very complicated and has been the subject of much research and debate in it's own right, but to blithely say that he had no "moral standards" is insulting.
It is perfectly all right to not like his music, but to utterly defame him is another thing entirely.
As to whether or not he could write a good melody, there are so many counter examples in his music that it isn't worth taking the time to enumerate them.

Indeed - and not only was his support of Weinberg consistent and unfaltering as well as risky, he was advised never to mention the name of Roslavets in classes but somehow contrived to fail to heed this instruction; Roslavets had fallen prey to what he initially took to be the virtues of the then new (1920s) Soviet system) even before Shostakovich, a quaeter century his junior, had done so but there;s no doubting that it soon afterwards came back to bite each of them where it most hurt...

[ahinton]

Couldn't agree more. I've read some tosh on this forum (and its BBC predecessor) at times but message 171 takes first prize. All the hallmarks of a deliberate wind up.

Yes - I cannot imagine its intended purpose to be anything other than just that...

[richardfinegold]

Ah - back to the original question. For me, it's the 13th Symphony, by some distance. Then the 10th.

Interesting choice. I have great respect for 13th and I do listen to it but I find it to draining to be a pleasurable enough experience to rank the work ahead of many of his other Symphonies. I am the grandson of Ukranian Jews, whom no doubt may have perished at Babi Yar had they not emigrated during the Russian Civil War, so perhaps that has something to do with my personal feelings.

[Petrushka]

Ah - back to the original question. For me, it's the 13th Symphony, by some distance. Then the 10th.

Probably Shostakovich's most Russian symphony and one rarely heard in our concert halls. I've only heard it once in concert: Mariinsky Orchestra/Gergiev at the Proms. It didn't help listener's comprehension that early recordings didn't include the text and as it's sung more or less throughout that presented something of a problem.

Have you heard the recording on the Russian Disc label taken from a live performance on December 20 1962 with Vitaly Gromadsky/Moscow PO/Kondrashin? This was, I think, the second performance of the piece (the premiere given two days earlier) and the tension is absolutely electric and comes across the years with potent force. One of the great Shostakovich recordings and an essential purchase.

Now available from marketplace sellers at a price http://www.amazon.co.uk/Shostakovich...hony+gromadsky

[makropulos]

Probably Shostakovich's most Russian symphony and one rarely heard in our concert halls. I've only heard it once in concert: Mariinsky Orchestra/Gergiev at the Proms. It didn't help listener's comprehension that early recordings didn't include the text and as it's sung more or less throughout that presented something of a problem.

Have you heard the recording on the Russian Disc label taken from a live performance on December 20 1962 with Vitaly Gromadsky/Moscow PO/Kondrashin? This was, I think, the second performance of the piece (the premiere given two days earlier) and the tension is absolutely electric and comes across the years with potent force. One of the great Shostakovich recordings and an essential purchase.

Now available from marketplace sellers at a price http://www.amazon.co.uk/Shostakovich...hony+gromadsky

Yes - I have that extraordinary recording - as you say, it's very special. The one I came to know it from as a student was the Ormandy RCA disc made in 1970 (with Tom Krause), which included a very useful pamphlet with all the texts (transliterated) and translations. I see that some kind soul has uploaded this to youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1pVP0rivMs8 - I believe this has only been reissued on CD in Japan, but I think it's a wonderful performance - it's one of my favourite Ormandy records.

[Ferretfancy]

Does anybody remember the Prom in which Yetushenko gave a thrilling reading of Babi Yar? I remember the sense of occasion and his tall figure on the stage, but I cannot recall which one of the Soviet orchestras played the symphony.

[Sydney Grew]

. . . I've read some tosh on this forum (and its BBC predecessor) at times but message 171 takes first prize. All the hallmarks of a deliberate wind up.

I say old chap! Don't impute false motives to people who post things that don't suit you. That's hardly cricket, it's ugly, and it poisons the atmosphere. What I wrote in message 171 is my honest belief about what the facts are; and if we are going to start censuring people for their honest beliefs and calling them "deliberate wind-ups" there is little hope for this forum. I only wrote message 171 in response to some one's request, and it took quite a time to look up all the information and write it up. So kindly remove that final phrase, would you?

For the information of members, here is something a respected English critic has written about the third "symphony":

[Richard Barrett]

For the information of members, here is something a respected English critic has written about the third "symphony":

Can't you read the thread title?

I've been interested to see how many different pieces become people's "favourite", including some (7th string quartet!) that I can't bring to mind at all. I don't imagne the 3rd symphony will be many people's favourite though. Earlier in the thread I mentioned the 4th symphony, which no doubt is a common choice, but there doesn't seem to have been much mention of the 14th, which in terms of form, scoring and expression is on a similar level of distinctiveness I think. (Again I realise I haven't heard it for a while.)

[ahinton]

I say old chap! Don't impute false motives to people who post things that don't suit you. That's hardly cricket, it's ugly, and it poisons the atmosphere. What I wrote in message 171 is my honest belief about what the facts are; and if we are going to start censuring people for their honest beliefs and calling them "deliberate wind-ups" there is little hope for this forum. I only wrote message 171 in response to some one's request, and it took quite a time to look up all the information and write it up. So kindly remove that final phrase, would you?

For the information of members, here is something a respected English critic has written about the third "symphony":

"Cricket" is hardly a Russian game. Whilst what you wrote might well be your honest belief, not only does that not of itself make it factually correct but, in this case, it also impugns both the composer and his teacher for having colluded for the purpose of having a symphony ghost-written, which is a most serious allegation that requires to be supported by the kind of reliable factual evidence up with which you have clearly been unable to come; what you have "looked up" and "written up" plainly provides no such evidence.

[french frank]

As may be assumed from the typography, the critics quoted are centenarians who, however eminent, have not had the opportunity to absorb the compositions of their immediate contemporaries with the same degree of attention and insight as even the meanest of critics at the present time.

I suggest the late Mr Grew and Dr Abraham be allowed to rest in peace, and let the discussion between latter day enthusiasts be permitted to continue without further disruption.

[ahinton]

As may be assumed from the typography, the critics quoted are centenarians who, however eminent, have not had the opportunity to absorb the compositions of their immediate contemporaries with the same degree of attention and insight as even the meanest of critics at the present time.

I suggest the late Mr Grew and Dr Abraham be allowed to rest in peace, and let the discussion between latter day enthusiasts be permitted to continue without further disruption.

Good idea. Grew died in 1946, almost 30 years before Shostakovich did, so he'd have heard almost nothing that Shostakovich completed after the seventh symphony. Abraham, though just two years Shostakovich's senior and who outlived him by some 13 years, wrote (clearly for a largely British audience) in his otherwise rather poorly researched and decidedly opinionated book Eight Soviet Composers of the conditions under which such composers had often to function that those conditions "are quite foreign to our conception of the circumstances in which a creative artist should work and they have exercised an almost crippling restraint on such talented musicians as Shostakovich"; he speaks well not only of the first symphony but also of the cello sonata, first string quartet and parts of the sixth symphony but his piece, that opens with the words "by more or less general consent, Dmitry Shostakovich (born at St. Petersburg in 1906), is acknowledged to be the most significant composer yet produced by the Soviet Union" (which ignores the fact that the composer was born 11 years before the Revolution), ends with the seventh symphony so deals with nothing that DDS wrote thereafter (and he'd not even bothered to check the fourth symphony in its 2-piano version which was available at the time of writing). One has only to read Abraham's dreadful book This Modern Stuff to get more than enough flavour of his writing "style" to confirm that much of what he wrote in those days wasn't worth reading then and is mainly laughable now.

Yes, indeed - back to Shostakovich himself and members' thoughts on those of his works that mean the most to them!

[Stanfordian]

At the Berlin Musikfest in September I heard the Shostakovich 2 Pieces for String Octet (Prelude and Scherzo for Strings), Op. 11 (1924)played by the Mahler Chamber Orchestra under Teodor Currentzis. This enjoyable score written by the teenage Shostakovich is well worth hearing. But I have not tracked managed to track down any recommendable recording.

[Beef Oven!]

One has only to read Abraham's dreadful book This Modern Stuff to get more than enough flavour of his writing "style" to confirm that much of what he wrote in those days wasn't worth reading then and is mainly laughable now.

For the avoidance of doubt, you are saying that it is worth reading (as you have done) , aren't you?

“He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side, if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion... Nor is it enough that he should hear the opinions of adversaries from his own teachers, presented as they state them, and accompanied by what they offer as refutations. He must be able to hear them from persons who actually believe them...he must know them in their most plausible and persuasive form.”