Search - Dmitry Shostakovich, Spoken Word, Ladislav Slovak :: Dmitry Shostakovich: A Portrait

An Excellent 'Portrait' of Shostakovich!!!

Louie Bourland | Garden Grove CA | 03/22/2006

(5 out of 5 stars)

"I've been waiting for a release of this nature for a long time - a near-definitive collection that captures the very essence of the great Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-75). With 2006 being the 100th anniversary year of the composer's birth, what better time to release a collection like this than now.

The "Portrait" collection is packed to its limits with defining musical moments from Shostakovich's repertoire. Excerpts from his famous "24 Preludes and Fugues", his epic symphonies, string quartets and violin concerto are all included here in uncut movements. Of special interest is the Preludes and Fugues that bookend the set because these were performed by Shostakovich himself from recordings made in the early 1950s. Also of interest is a short extract from a radio address in 1941 that features Shostakovich announcing (in Russian) work on his monumental Seventh Symphony (aka the "Leningrad Symphony").

The 100-page booklet that accompanies the CD-set features an excellent detailed essay on Shostakovich that gives an in-depth look at the composer's life and music as well as historic photos.

The only real downfall to the collection is the fact that excerpts from some of Shostakovich's best known works are missing here. There isn't any music from his famous "Leningrad" Seventh Symphony nor is there any from the equally famous Eleventh ("The Year 1905"). Also missing is music from the Cello Concerto and the famous "Festive Overture". Of course to include these pieces would have meant to extend from double-CD to a triple set. Since both CDs in this set are filled to their limits at 79 minutes each, I guess the omission of the above important works can be accepted. Besides what we do have here is some excellent music to begin with.

With this said, "A Portrait" of Dmitri Shostakovich is an excellent beginners guide to this dynamic yet controversial composer. I personally cannot think of a better introduction to his music than this.

Bravo to Naxos for this excellent release and a happy 100th to this great Russian musical genius."

Excellent Extended Booklet Notes, Mostly Fine Performances

J Scott Morrison | Middlebury VT, USA | 04/29/2006

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Presumably the purpose of this two CD set (at a marvelous budget price) is to acquaint those unfamiliar with Shostakovich's music with as broad a range of his output as possible. The excerpts are all full movements and they are presented in chronological order with some minor exceptions. The booklet text, very clearly written by Richard Whitehouse, is not only informative, it is even-handed in the way it lays out some of the controversies surrounding Shostakovich's life and works. He not only makes comments about and sets out the historical context of the works presented, but also mentions others that are not included, so that one gets rather a fuller picture of his oeuvre than the music tracks would suggest.



Included are movements from nine of his fifteen symphones -- Nos. 1, 4, 5, 8, 9, 10, 13, 14 & 15; nothing from No. 7, the 'Leningrad' is included. Several of his piano preludes and fugues are presented, including the opening track which is from Shostakovich's own recording of No. 1 in C. Konstantin Scherbakov is heard in the others, plus a piece I don't recall hearing before, the brief, humorous 'Fantastic Dance in C, Op. 5, No. 3.' Several movements from ballet/movie suites are here -- from 'The Golden Age', 'The Bolt', 'The Gadfly', and 'Hamlet.' Only two string quartet movements are included, not enough in my opinion as his string quartets are among the glories of twentieth-century music, even though he came to the form rather late. We hear excerpts from the Piano Quintet in G Minor and the Piano Trio No. 2, Op. 67 (not the Adagio, but the second movement Allegro). Ilya Kaler plays an incandescent Passacaglia from the First Violin Concerto, Annette Bartholdy plays the first movement of the Viola Sonata beautifully, and Michael Houstoun equally so in the Andante from the Second Piano Concerto (the one Shostakovich wrote for his son Maksim).



Quality of the performances varies a bit. I've never been terribly fond of the complete symphonies as recorded by Slovak Radio Symphony under Ladislav Slovak -- let's face it, this is not a top-tier orchestra. But the movie/film excerpts, played by other east European orchestras, are fine. As for the chamber works and piano works, they are excellent. Konstantin Scherbakov, a really fine pianist, is heard in several of the preludes and fugues, and another excellent Russian pianist, Boris Berman, is heard with the Vermeer Quartet in the Piano Quintet excerpt. The Stockholm Arts Trio is slightly less fine in the Op. 67 piano trio excerpt. The string quartet excerpts (from Nos. 8 and 12) are played wonderfully by the Eder Quartet.



For lagniappe there is a brief 1941 recording of Shostakovich making a radio address -- in Russian, of course, but with an English translation in the booklet.



I would go so far as to suggest that Richard Whitehouse's 92-page booklet is very nearly worth the price of the two-CD set, particularly for those who have not read much about the composer previously.



Scott Morrison"

A STEP IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION

DAVID BRYSON | Glossop Derbyshire England | 01/01/2008

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Much the best way to think of this set, in my own opinion, is as a lengthy essay on Shostakovich with musical illustrations rather than as a musical selection with commentary. As a nosegay of musical blossoms it has little or no theme or coherence; but as a series of milestones illuminating a resume of the composers life and career it makes very good sense indeed. The whole set is framed by the first and last pieces from Shostakovich's 24 preludes and fugues played by the composer, and the first disc ends with a couple of minutes from a broadcast he made in Leningrad in the dark days of 1941. For the rest, the selection follows chronological order, reflecting the text in that matter.



Most of the commentary I had previously read on Shostakovich seemed to me very unsatisfactory. The writers reminded me of the state of mankind before the coming of Prometheus - ephyron eike panta: `they were confusing all sorts of different things'. One distinguished authority, I recall, informed me that some work or works `ranged from industrialisation to...' something or other. How can any music whatsoever range from industrialisation in any manner at all? To take just one more excellent phrase from the classics, music and industrialisation or Soviet artistic policy non bene conueniunt nec eadem in sede morantur: `they do not belong together nor inhabit the same sphere.' What this long essay (90 small pages) by Richard Whitehouse at least achieves is to separate such issues intelligibly. Whitehouse starts by refusing, sensibly, to take a position in the dispute whether the music of Shostakovich belongs in the top tier just as music or whether its significance has been inflated by its historical background. What he offers is a catalogue raisonne of the compositions in their sequence of output. He paints in the historical background at all times, and very properly so because this must have conditioned the composer's state of mind pretty powerfully, and he describes the music's style and content rather than evaluates it.



All well and good. However what I craved was some kind of attempt (the first I would ever have seen) to trace the development of the composer's style from a strictly musical viewpoint. Beethoven lived through a significant historical period, but we are all content with the division between his early middle and late styles without reference to the French revolution or the siege of Vienna. Nearer to Shostakovich's time the changes in Stravinsky's idiom have been charted and analysed clearly. It is quite true of course that these masters were not so inextricably involved in contemporary political events as Shostakovich was, but that should not inhibit a similar analysis of the music of Shostakovich, although I dare say it is a much harder task. What Whitehouse settles for is telling us that such-and-such a work is like this, then such-and-such another is like that, then a third is... I can trace no distinct path through the musical output other than the familiar trench gouged out in the grisly historical backdrop. In his `Interlude' half-way through Whitehouse raised my hopes for a nano-second that he was going to get to grips with this issue, only to fumble the ball again, reverting to vague if safe generalities about Shostakovich's state of mind. By the time Shostakovich was nearly on his deathbed Whitehouse shyly mentions `the composer's "late period" in all its technical and expressive essentials.' THAT, covering all periods, was what I was after, and perhaps Mr Whitehouse will get round to it in due course.



What makes the matter so important to me is that I have always had, and still have, difficulty in discerning the distinctive musical personality of Shostakovich. I am quite ready to award him the highest accolades for his best music, and I find that easier to do than some find it because I take his own `programmes' for his music with more than a pinch of salt, full as they are of contradictions and changes of mind, and I tend simply to ignore them. What I am not clear about is - who is he as a musician? What is his musical personality? Stravinsky and Prokofiev are nearly as impossible to mistake as Sibelius or Elgar, through all their stages of development. Glancing just at the selection offered here, the second piano concerto, op 102, is melodious and reactionary, completely out of style with the tenth symphony op 93 or the eighth string quartet op 110. What kind of chameleon is this? Or if there is really an unbroken thread that I'm missing I wish someone would point it out to me. Thinking along these lines and flipping through the pages, I suddenly realised that even the composer's photographs gave me similar issues. The one in the first chapter is a dead ringer for Bill Gates, but nearly all the others remind me vaguely of someone if only I could recall whom, and so does a lot of his music.



If Mr Whitehouse's essay had not been as good as it is I would have complained less. It is just that when, at long last, I read a commentary on Shostakovich that does not commit what the philosopher Gilbert Ryle calls the category mistake I awake from the torpor that other commentaries induce in me to demand more, because here we are finally on the right lines. Whitehouse is thorough and very adept in packing a lot of information into a compact space without seeming curt, he is rational in his judgments, and he is deeply sympathetic to his subject. I make no apology for saying next to nothing about the performances on offer, because to me they are simply background. Their job is to inform or to remind the reader concerning what the author is talking about. That they do perfectly well, and that is all I was looking for from them.



And to Naxos the Invaluable my heartfelt gratitude for yet another gem."