Search - Shostakovich, Temirkanov :: Symphonies 5 & 9

A pair of exultant Shostakovich readings from one of the bes

Santa Fe Listener | Santa Fe, NM USA | 03/01/2010

(5 out of 5 stars)

"At budget price, this CD is unmissable, since it features one of the two greatest Shostakovich conductors in the post-Soviet era, along with Valery Gergiev. Born in 1938, Temirkanov is seventeen years older than Gergiev, but the Stalinist world of his childhood and his prominent Soviet career put him at a distance from his younger countryman. This is reflected in their Shostakovich. Gergiev's tends to be polished, cosmopolitan, at times refined. Temirkanov's is brisker, more blunt, more indigenous feeling. I prefer his way in the Ninth Sym., where the opening s rollicking and uncomplicated in its exuberance, whereas Gergiev's is too much reflected over. In the wake of the scandal that arose when Shostakovich failed to produce a suitably grand victory symphony after WW II, it's as if Gergiev wants to restore a depth that isn't there, although Bernstein has much the same notion. Temirkanov's directness feels true to the score to me. The St. Petersburg Phil. was flying high in 1995, and RCA, empoying 20-bit technology, recorded them with impressive range and depth. A clear winner.



Competition is fiercer, of course, in the every-present Shostakovich Fifth, and I suppose Temirkanov's reading didn't make the grade, given its fairly rapid cut out from the catalog. I have a hard time approaching this work without knowing in advance what I want: a griping, tense first movement, bitterly sardonic Scherzo, haunting Largo, and brilliant, racing finale. Or to attach a single name to my ideal" Yevgeny Mravinsky, the legend who preceded Temirkanov and was his mentor with this orchestra. In the first movement, where so many conductors lose tension after the first big thematic statement, so does Temirkanov, but his phrasing is eloquent in its melancholy tenderness, never descending to faked pathos, and I'm convinced. We are in a more shadowy world than with Mravinsky, whose view of the Fifth was non-revisionist (i.e., heroic and triumphal). In Addition, the sound and playing on this CD far surpass the four Mravinsky versions I'm familiar with.



Similarly, the Scherzo and Largo are forthright and powerful, played without any irony. Here, Temirknov hews closer to Gergiev, whose reading of the Fifth on Philips is also non-revisionist and "positive," to use a favorite phrase of British critics. On the whole, I think the older conductor is actually more involved and interested in the symphony -- for Gergiev, it must be one of a hundred works he conducts in a year -- or a month. Only in the finale do I think Temirkanov phones in his reading, and the engineers made a mistake by miking the timpani to sound like thunderclaps. Still, this is a Shostakovich CD to match any recent releases from any quarter."