Shostakovich Symphony 14; Marina Tsvetaeva Poems
View record and artist detailsRecord and Artist Details
Composer or Director: Dmitri Shostakovich
Label: Decca
Magazine Review Date: 3/1987
Media Format: CD or Download
Media Runtime: 0
Mastering:
DDD
Catalogue Number: 417 514-2DH
Tracks:
Composition | Artist Credit |
---|---|
Symphony No. 14 |
Dmitri Shostakovich, Composer
(Royal) Concertgebouw Orchestra, Amsterdam Bernard Haitink, Conductor Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Baritone Dmitri Shostakovich, Composer Julia Varady, Soprano |
(6) Marina Tsvetaeva Poems |
Dmitri Shostakovich, Composer
(Royal) Concertgebouw Orchestra, Amsterdam Bernard Haitink, Conductor Dmitri Shostakovich, Composer Ortrun Wenkel, Contralto (Female alto) |
Author: Michael Oliver
Not for the first time is reappearance on CD a mixed blessing. With the singers that much closer to you than on LP it is all the easier to notice that Fischer-Dieskau's powerful dramatic sense leads him at times into coarse over-acting, that Varady's French is far from idiomatic and that both of them are very forwardly placed in relationship to the orchestra (one notices this all the more since Wenkel, in the Tsvetayeva songs, is in a much more natural perspective). And I am beginning to have second thought about the wisdom of singing the poems of the Fourteenth Symphony in the original languages instead of the Russian translations that Shostakovich set. The idea had the composer's sanction, but it does alter note-values and the coinciding of musical and poetic images quite a bit. Still, this is carping: Haitink's performance is a vivid one and seems all the more so for the crisp precision with which instrumental timbres are realized on CD; the deeply moving Tsvetayeva songs are a generous bonus. But you will need to tinker with the volume control if Varady and Fischer-Dieskau are not to blast you out of your seat.'
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