Shostakovich: Pesky and Powerful

Dmitri Shostakovich made his name in the mid-’20s with his cheeky First Symphony. Little did the world know how much peskier he would become in the ‘30s (his and the century’s), with such scathing operatic satires as “The Nose” and “Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk” and the depressive Fourth Symphony, which Stalin’s cultural commissars denounced with a vehemence stern even by their maniacally skewed standards.

His subsequent “easier” works drew the wrath of critics in the West, who lamented his bending to authority. Then, in his final years, from the early ‘60s to his death in 1975, Shostakovich produced music so private, so recondite, that it found neither audience nor critical hostility. It was, simply, ignored.

The West never wholeheartedly supported Shostakovich in any phase, except perhaps in Britain where a strong following among critics and musicians--led by Benjamin Britten--remained loyal through every curious turning in the Soviet composer’s creative career.

In recent years, however, Shostakovich’s music in general has achieved an unprecedented, universal degree of exposure and popularity. He was a composer waiting to happen--and he has happened, with the exception of his operas. Live performances of even his toughest symphonies and quartets proliferate, and recordings--in undreamt of profusion--are ours for the listening.

A fascinating aspect of performers’ increasing exposure to his scores is the realization that no Shostakovich performing tradition exists. He has not been gone long enough or sufficiently studied for that to have taken place. Thus, each interpreter has the opportunity to speak for himself without fear of contradiction by academic watchdogs.

Take an identical coupling of the heroic (to most ears) Fifth Symphony--with which Shostakovich reestablished himself in Soviet officialdom’s ears after his “anti-Soviet” transgressions of the mid-1930s--and the postwar Ninth Symphony, once regarded as anemically lightweight and today perceived as a marvel of subtle wit.

As performed, in presumably idiomatic style by the U.S.S.R. Ministry of Culture Symphony under Gennady Rozhdestvensky (Melodiya 113)--part of these artists’ ongoing traversal of the composer’s symphonic output--weightiness, darkness and drama are paramount and not only in the Fifth: the skittishly jovial outer movements of the Ninth project their share of menace as well.

Yoel Levi, who leads the Atlanta Symphony (Telarc 80215), produces readings of the same works that are bright-toned, clean-textured and exhilarating. Where Levi’s rhythms spring, Rozhdestvensky’s are hewn.

Sonically it’s no contest, the Americans being accorded the super-sharp, incisive reproduction demanded by the bracing athleticism of Levi and his Atlantans, while the Russian recording is dense and overloaded, but not to the point of obscuring the eloquence of the interpretations.

Among Shostakovich’s 15 string quartets, the dramatic and brilliant Eighth, dating from 1960 but an emotional flashback to World War II, remains the most frequently heard. This work along with the moody, haunting Fourth of 1949, and the quirky, elliptic No. 11 of 1966, are played by Britain’s youthful Coull Quartet (ASV Recordings 631), offering a viable alternative to the grander, more virtuosic readings of the venerable Borodin Quartet on EMI/Angel.

The devastating E-minor Trio, Opus 67 (1944), long one of the composer’s more frequently encountered creations and the origin of the striking “Jewish” theme in the Eighth Quartet, is delivered with a winning combination of grandeur, intensity and lyric grace by an ensemble of seasoned locals calling themselves the Pacific Trio: pianist Edith Orloff, violinist Endre Balogh and cellist John Walz. It’s on the minuscule Brio Classics label (BRC 31928), whose engineers give evidence of knowing all there is to know about the elusive art of recording chamber music.

Too bad Brio couldn’t have found a more inspired coupling than the 15th CD version of the Brahms Opus 87 Trio.

Our star pianists have not as yet gotten around to Shostakovich’s solo music for that instrument, but when they do they might take a long look at the First Sonata, written in 1926, just after the First Symphony which it resembles not at all. The Sonata is a crashing, banging piece of musical primitivism that recalls Prokofiev at his most fiercely percussive. It is vastly entertaining as well in the powerful, vital hands of a 25-year-old Soviet pianist named Lilya Zilberstein, who also delivers Rachmaninoff’s Opus 32 Preludes with all the dexterity, power and fantasy one could desire (Deutsche Grammophon 427 766).