SHOSTAKOVICH Symphonies
No.1 & 5
Decca 478 4214 / ****1/2
The
Soviet-era Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975) wrote 15
symphonies, essays which he referred to as “tombstones for the victims of
Stalin”, that spanned his entire compositional career. Here are his two most
accessible symphonies, ideal starting points for listeners wishing to explore
his absorbing and intriguing legacy. The First
Symphony (1925), composed when he was still a student of 19, reveals a
striking originality, freshness of ideas and trademark dark humour that was to
follow the rest of his life. Listen for the subtle quote from Wagner’s Tristan And Isolde in the finale,
setting the precedent for further Wagner quotations in his Fifteenth Symphony.
The
Fifth Symphony (1937) marked a
landmark of his rehabilitation from “Western decadence” in the eyes of the
Stalinist authorities. Its four movements, outwardly depicting struggle and
ultimate triumph of the will, were deliberately ambiguous. Inwardly, they
reflect a people oppressed under the yoke of authoritarianism. This is a
super-budget-priced reissue of recordings by Dutch master Bernard Haitink from
the early 1980s, when Shostakovich’s legacy was still being hotly debated. Was
he a rebel or an apparatchik? The performances are technically impeccable,
recorded in pristine sound, and tend to the more objective of views. Look to
the late Russian conductors, notably Kirill Kondrashin (on Melodiya), for a
more personally nuanced approach.
50 BEST ORGAN CLASSICS
EMI Classics 433316 2 (3
CDs) / ****
Must every collection of pipe organ music begin
with J.S.Bach’s Toccata & Fugue
in D minor? It is predictably the case with this budget box-set that crams 50
tracks within three discs. So it is better to start with CD 3, devoted to the
great French organ tradition. It begins with Le Jardin Espendu and Litanies
by Jehan Alain, killed in battle action at the age of 29 during the Second
World War. Maurice Duruflé’s Prelude
& Fugue On The Name Of Alain, which quotes the theme from Litanies, is also included here. Two
movements from Leon Boellmann’s Suite
Gothique are heard, and has anyone noticed that his imperious Toccata has the same melody as our Di Tanjung Katong? Virtuoso fare by
Gigout, Mulet and Bonnet beckons, and the set closes with the finale from
Saint-Saens’s Organ Symphony.
Baroque music occupies CD 1, and it is not just
Bach, but Buxtehude, Clerambault, Couperin, Daquin and Handel’s most famous
organ concerto, nicknamed The Cuckoo And The
Nightingale. CD 2 has the wedding favourites; Mendelssohn’s Wedding March, Jeremiah Clarke’s Trumpet Voluntary, Purcell’s Trumpet Tune and Widor’s Toccata are all here. The roster of
organists is distinguished, including Simon Preston, Nicholas Kynaston (who
inaugurated Victoria Concert Hall’s Klais organ), Jane Parker-Smith and Wayne
Marshall among them. To the record label’s credit, even the locations of the
individual organs have been named. There are no accompanying notes, but this is
a pretty good sampler for budding organ enthusiasts and beginners.
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