Shostakovich Symphony No 14
Treasures from the BBC Britten archives include the first performance outside the USSR of Shostakovich's Symphony No. 14
View record and artist detailsRecord and Artist Details
Composer or Director: Dmitri Shostakovich, Benjamin Britten
Label: IMG Artists/Britten the Performer
Magazine Review Date: 12/1999
Media Format: CD or Download
Media Runtime: 78
Mastering:
ADD
Catalogue Number: BBCB8013-2

Tracks:
Composition | Artist Credit |
---|---|
Symphony No. 14 |
Dmitri Shostakovich, Composer
Benjamin Britten, Conductor Dmitri Shostakovich, Composer English Chamber Orchestra Galina Vishnevskaya, Soprano Mark Rezhetin, Bass |
Nocturne |
Benjamin Britten, Composer
Benjamin Britten, Conductor Benjamin Britten, Composer English Chamber Orchestra Peter Pears, Tenor |
Composer or Director: Benjamin Britten
Label: IMG Artists/Britten the Performer
Magazine Review Date: 12/1999
Media Format: CD or Download
Media Runtime: 69
Mastering:
ADD
Catalogue Number: BBCB8014-2

Tracks:
Composition | Artist Credit |
---|---|
Our Hunting Fathers |
Benjamin Britten, Composer
Benjamin Britten, Conductor Benjamin Britten, Composer London Symphony Orchestra Peter Pears, Tenor |
Who are these children |
Benjamin Britten, Composer
Benjamin Britten, Piano Benjamin Britten, Composer Peter Pears, Tenor |
Canticle No. 3 Still falls the rain |
Benjamin Britten, Composer
Benjamin Britten, Piano Benjamin Britten, Composer Dennis Brain, Horn Peter Pears, Tenor |
Lachrymae |
Benjamin Britten, Composer
Benjamin Britten, Piano Benjamin Britten, Composer Margaret Major, Viola |
Author: Edward Greenfield
Britten's Op. 8, Our Hunting Fathers, created something of a scandal when it was first performed at the Norwich Festival in 1936. In the face of a commission from such a source, it was deliberately provocative of Britten's collaborator, W. H. Auden, to choose an anti-blood sports theme in his texts, and the composer in his interpretation here, biting and urgent to the point of violence in climaxes, reflects what he must have felt in writing the work. Pears is in superb voice too, focused sharply in this rather dry mono BBC studio recording of 1961. That also adds to the bite of the reading.
In Lachrymae, not so much a set of variations on the Dowland theme as a series of episodic reflections, the playing of Britten at the piano helps enormously in holding a tricky work together. It is a case of the creator himself magnetizing the ear almost as if it were an improvisation, with Margaret Major characteristically warm in her beautifully sustained reading - an artist well remembered for her superb contributions to the vintage Aeolian Quartet.
Though Britten and Pears recorded for Decca the late song-cycle,
The major drawback to this issue is the absence of texts, and that is a flaw too in the other issue, not just in Britten's Nocturne but equally in the varied texts in Russian of Shostakovich's Symphony No. 14. This was the symphony which Shostakovich dedicated to Britten, and this Maltings performance conducted by Britten was the very first outside Russia, a monumental event as I remember myself. Galina Vishnevskaya's sharply distinctive soprano has rarely sounded so rich or firmly focused on disc, and the bass, Mark Rezhetin, firm and dark, sings gloriously too. The tensions of a live performance add to the drama of a piece on the theme of death, poignantly so, when, as we now know, both Britten and Shostakovich were facing terminal illness.
The Nocturne makes an ideal filler in this vivid live performance. Compared with his 1959 studio recording for Decca, Pears here sounds warmer and sweeter, balanced a little backwardly and so set against a helpful ambience. The soloists in each song, by contrast, are more closely balanced than in the Decca recording, adding to the impact of such a song as the Wordsworth with its terrifying timpani obbligato superbly played here by James Blades. Indeed, all the solo instrumentalists here are even more attuned to Britten's idiom than their LSO counterparts on Decca, who, in tackling what was then a brand new work, sound a degree less flexible. These radio recordings from different sources inevitably bring contrasted sound, but all the transfers are first-rate.'
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