A Sharing of Shostakovich’s Tenth

Stalin would have hated Shostakovich’s Tenth Symphony, with its frightening darkness, its sadistic glee and its nervous fits. But neither he nor his running dog, cultural commissaA. Zhdanov, lived to hear it. Stalin died in March, 1953, a few months before Shostakovich set to work on this, his first symphony in eight years.

Zhdanov had passed away in 1948, secure perhaps in the (mistaken) belief that Shostakovich had in his Ninth Symphony complied with Zhdanov’s dictum that Soviet music be upbeat, edifying and in major keys.

During the past decade, the Tenth Symphony has assumed the status not so much of audience favorite--it is not easy or entertaining music--as of conductors’ pet: a big, snarling one, to be sure.

The Tenth has become the Shostakovich symphony to perform if you’re performing only one, replacing the once-ubiquitous Fifth.

Lately, the Tenth has also prospered on recordings, although it’s doubtful that consumer demand prompted London Records to issue two new editions virtually back to back.

One is most welcome, the other an example of costly excess.

The winner comes from the Cleveland Orchestra (430 844), playing with its customary polish and, for want of a more objective expression, a degree of collective heart not always apparent in its high-tech products. Credit Christoph von Dohnanyi, a conductor better known for his analytical skill, his ability to clarify the workings of a complex composition, than for the soulfulness of his interpretations.

On this occasion, Dohnanyi illuminates not only Shostakovich’s mechanics but his emotional intensity as well.

The immediate competition (433 073) comes from a thick-sounding Chicago Symphony, recorded live in Orchestra Hall, in a presumed gift to octogenarian Georg Solti, who faithful to London Records, has earned millions over four decades for the label.

In contrast to Dohnanyi’s perceptive shaping, Solti suggests that he is directing with his fist, and rarely with his left hand, in producing this dynamically unsubtle performance. Furthermore, Solti’s measure-by-measure conducting creates an impression of foot-dragging, although his overall timings differ only marginally from Dohnanyi’s.

As a valuable bonus, Dohnanyi and the immaculate Cleveland strings offer Lutoslawski’s agonized, agonizing “Musique funebre,” in memoriam Bela Bartok. Solti’s Shostakovich takes up the entire disc.

Don’t go away yet. There’s a third newly released Tenth to satisfy what some industry optimists (visionaries?) must regard as insatiable demand. It displays the work of conductor Evgeny Mravinsky, the feared, revered, tyrannical overseer of the Leningrad Philharmonic from 1938 until shortly before his death a half-century later.

Among Mravinsky’s many notable accomplishments was presiding over the premieres not only of Shostakovich’s Tenth Symphony but of the Fourth, Fifth, Eighth and Ninth as well, placing him in the front lines with the composer in the latter’s battles for artistic dignity and against cultural censorship.

Taped live in Leningrad in 1976 (Erato 45743, mid-price), this is as ferocious a reading as any listener could desire, or fear.

Never more than here, Mravinsky’s conducting projects a sort of controlled hysteria which engulfs the susceptible listener. And while it’s hard to deny the somber power he brings to--or, more fairly, extracts from--this score with his slashingly emphatic beat, swooping dynamics and blistering tempos, orchestral execution is not all it should be.

The fabled Leningrad strings do produce a gloriously lush-toned roar--a strikingly effective anomaly given the score’s acerbic harmonies--but the woodwinds are unable to keep pace in the hellish second movement, while here and elsewhere the brasses exceed the allowable quota of flubbed entrances.

Still, the Mravinsky-Leningrad Shostakovich Tenth is a thriller, not least for the walloping impact of its recorded sound.