Shostakovich: Suite for Variety Orchestra (Jazz Suite No. 2); Moscow, Cheryomushki—Suite; Jazz Suite No. 1; Tahiti Trot. Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin conducted by Steven Sloane. The Bolt—Ballet Suite; The Tale of the Priest and His Servant Balda—Suite; The Age of Gold—Ballet Suite. MDR Sinfonieorchester conducted by Dmitrij Kitajenko. Piano Concerto No. 1. Reinhold Friedrich, trumpet; Thomas Duis, piano; Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin conducted by Lutz Köhler. Violin Concerto No. 1. Vladimir Spivakov, violin; Gürzenich Orchester Köln conducted by James Conlon. Capriccio. $33.99 (3 CDs).
Although he has now been dead for half a century, Dmitri Shostakovich has offered a near-perfect encapsulation of this exceptionally odd three-CD re-release of his music, calling it “a frivolous and indigestible provincial mishmash.”
Well, all right, Shostakovich did not say that specifically about this recording – he made the comment in 1934 about what he saw as the burgeoning trivial use, or misuse, of jazz as an element of concert music. The words do fit, though: someone who thought of throwing all sorts of Shostakovich recordings against the proverbial wall to see which ones would stick could well have conceptualized this compilation of performances from 2004 (CD #1), 2005 (CD #2), 1995 (part of CD #3), and 2000 (the rest of CD #3). The mixture of recording dates and venues is not the issue here, nor is the inclusion of performances led by four different conductors (although one of them, Dmitrij Kitajenko, outshines the rest). The problem is that the works offered here coexist so uneasily within the Shostakovich catalogue that it is very hard to understand to whom the recording is intended to appeal. Yes, Shostakovich himself offers, again and again, an odd mixture of the intense and serious, on the one hand; the intense and acerbic, on the other; and the light and decidedly un-intense on the third. And it does not hurt to have three ears, or at least three listening styles, to encompass all the frequently contradictory elements of the composer’s oeuvre.
It is also true that, taken individually, the performances offered here are all quite fine, so anyone who does want this particular grouping of material will be satisfied with the release, despite the dismal mismatch of the music on the included CDs. It would be easier to recommend the recording wholeheartedly if it were better priced, but it is not; so the bottom line is that there are some very well-done readings here of music that is quite ill-fitting within a single package – but that will certainly please anyone who happens to want to own this particular conflation of elements of Shostakovich’s musical personality.
The third disc, containing the first piano concerto (actually for trumpet and piano) and the first violin concerto, is all seriousness and intensity (and errors, as in the incorrect timings given for the piano concerto’s first and second movements). The ever-changing moods of the piano concerto range from playfulness to irony (sometimes both together) to pensiveness to somber thought. It is a difficult work to bring off effectively, precisely because of its quicksilver mood alterations, but Reinhold Friedrich and Thomas Duis do a more-than-creditable job with the solo parts, including the occasional conflicts between them, while Lutz Köhler conducts with care and competence if without any notable sense of flair. In Violin Concerto No. 1, the differing moods and emphases are more clearly delineated: the long first and third movements are deeply felt, while the brief second and fourth (which together are shorter than either the first or the third) provide some respite and at least a fleeting sense of something lighter (although the second movement, like many Shostakovich scherzos, never strays far from mockery). Vladimir Spivakov clearly feels this music deeply, and his performance is expressive and strongly emotional throughout. James Conlon is a dutifully supportive conductor, generally content to cede the foreground to the soloist – an approach that serves the music at least reasonably well.
If the overall mood of the third CD in this package is deep and dark, that of the first two CDs is substantially lighter. Some of the works on these discs had serious purposes within the then-mandated “socialist realism” approach of the Soviet Union to music, but even those managed to maintain, sometimes uneasily, a rather light touch. The first disc here includes the two Jazz Suites, the second of which is now often called Suite for Variety Orchestra and is significantly longer than the first (eight movements in 25+ minutes compared with three movements lasting less than nine minutes). Both suites contain versions of a notable and deservedly popular waltz, a kind of valse triste (first movement of the first suite, seventh of the second); the other movements, although less immediately appealing, are similar in character and suitably light. This CD also includes four excerpts from Moscow, Cheryomushki, a mid-1950s work about housing issues in a specific Moscow district and the machinations of some corrupt (and eventually conquered) officials to turn things to their own benefit. The disc concludes with Tahiti Trot, Shostakovich’s famous transcription of the song Tea for Two from the musical No, No, Nanette – a straightforward little piece that in no way dispels the charm of the original and even adds to it here and there. Steven Sloane conducts on this disc with perhaps a touch too much seriousness in the lighter material, although several of the dance movements are winningly rhythmic.
Dmitrij Kitajenko is the conductor of the second disc included in this set, offering music that is less-known than that on the first CD but that really comes alive under his leadership. Both The Bolt and The Golden Age were stage works designed to highlight the superiority of Soviet Communism over Western decadence – the former about a foiled attempt to sabotage work at a factory, the latter involving a Soviet sports team triumphing over an evil capitalist one. Despite the rather grim party-line approaches of the two works, Shostakovich created some very pleasant music that nicely contrasts the “good guys” with the evildoers – although, rather oddly, the “decadent” music often sounds more appealing than the forthright and often foursquare material given to the “heroic” characters. Kitajenko manages to handle the music for its own sake, without any propaganda dross associated with it. As a result, the contrasting sections of the material, especially in The Bolt, come through to very good effect, and the overall lightness of both suites is pleasant rather than dogmatic. Also here is a genuine rarity in the form of music from a now-lost 1933 animated film called The Tale of the Priest and His Servant Balda. The six short movements of this suite provide such clever musical characterizations – of “the Obscurantists,” a bazaar and “the priest’s daughter’s dream,” among others – that it is easy to visualize the sorts of scenes to which Shostakovich’s music would have been attached, even if it is impossible to know the actual visuals.
The two discs in this set containing some of Shostakovich’s lighter music provide the main reason for owning the discs, even though the more-in-depth material on the third CD is well-performed. The recording is, as a whole, a curious project, apparently driven more by the availability for re-release of high-quality readings of miscellaneous Shostakovich pieces than by any sense of suitability of the musical mixture. Still, listeners who happen to have an affinity for this specific three-hour-long mashup of music will find a great deal to enjoy in these generally fine performances of works that are familiar and less-familiar, lighter and darker, more serious and decidedly less so.
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