After a strangely desultory start, Rostropovich's Shostakovich cycle is at last gaining in stature and authority. In the First Symphony, the playing is much more detailed and articulate than is the case in most Western performances. The recording may not be state-of-the-art—Dutoit (see above) has the luxury of more sensuous Decca sound—but the close balance is certainly involving and the conductor's brand of relentless communication generally quells any doubts. Within a standard overall timing, the scherzo embraces both daring extremes of tempo and abrupt contrasts of timbre and dynamic, while the slow movement is nothing if not heartfelt. If you must have perfectly tuned timpani in the finale, you should look elsewhere but you will be missing a stimulating account of the Ninth. Here, Rostropovich is I think at pains to make the music sound as 'oppositional' as possible, whether by anticipating tempo changes or inventing a few of his own.
In the first movement, the conductor adds a curious, leering emphasis to the accented string writing even before the first caustic intrusion of trombone. The heavy, Soviet-style tempo, comparable with David Oistrakh's, gives plenty of scope for exaggerated articulation and the material acquires unlikely strength and gravitas in the development. As with Oistrakh (though not Kondrashin on his classic LP version, HMV, 1/69—nla), Rostropovich's Moderato is immoderately slow, the solemnity guyed by perky woodwind interjections turning deliberately raw at the climax. The third movement fairly flashes past and the exaggerated dynamics of the fourth make it more emptily rhetorical than ever. It is in the finale that Rostropovich is most obviously at pains to score extra-musical points. The apotheosis of the trivial bassoon theme is clearly intended to be as bitter and twisted as it was under Kondrashin, although the Washington orchestra doesn't quite have the authentic weight of sonority. But Rostropovich goes one step further in suddenly boosting the tempo from fig. 95 (5'10''), interpolating his own derisive commentary on the banality of imposed optimism, which means that he has to slow down again drastically, seconds before dashing to the finishing line as indicated from fig. 97 (5'39''). Rostropovich may be a subjective interpreter but he has not gone soft. Better such unmarked manipulations than the light-footed divertissement style commonly adopted. Why then do Teldec's notes persist in treating the score as some sort of neo-classical evasion?'