SHOSTAKOVICH The Execution of Stepan Razin

Ashkenazy in Helsinki for conflict-fuelled Shostakovich

Record and Artist Details

Composer or Director: Dmitri Shostakovich

Genre:

Vocal

Label: Ondine

Media Format: CD or Download

Media Runtime: 66

Mastering:

DDD

Catalogue Number: ODE1225-2

ODE1225-2. The Execution of Stepan Razin. Ashkenazy

Tracks:

Composition Artist Credit
(The) Execution of Stepan Razin Dmitri Shostakovich, Composer
Dmitri Shostakovich, Composer
Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra
Latvija State Choir
Shenyang, Bass-baritone
Vladimir Ashkenazy, Conductor
Zoya Dmitri Shostakovich, Composer
Dmitri Shostakovich, Composer
Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra
Vladimir Ashkenazy, Conductor
Suite on Finnish Themes Dmitri Shostakovich, Composer
Dmitri Shostakovich, Composer
Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra
Latvija State Choir
Mari Palo, Soprano
Tuomas Katajala, Tenor
Vladimir Ashkenazy, Conductor
Using roughly the same idiom as his Symphonies Nos 11, 12 and 13, Shostakovich’s The Execution of Stepan Razin tells the story of the 17th-century Cossack leader who paid for his defiance of the tsars with his head. In its clamorous demagogic tone, the cantata is a classic example of Shostakovich seeking to bend the rules both of Socialist Realism and of his own principles, in an attempt to find common ground. Also on his mind, one suspects, may have been the desirability of a counterweight to offset the non-conformism of the Babiy Yar Symphony, using words by the same author, the then young firebrand Yevtushenko.

For anyone who grew up, as I did, with the raw energy of Kondrashin on Melodiya in 1965, the sheer refinement and shapeliness of Ashkenazy’s recording may take some getting used to. In this case, however, the gains easily outweigh any losses – the music simply feels more musical this way. The Chinese bass baritone Shenyang (2007 Cardiff Singer of the World) and the Latvian chorus may not have the cower-behind-the-sofa quality of their Soviet counterparts but they are so much easier to listen to, especially in Ondine’s recording, which has just about ideal depth and perspective.

I would be surprised, too, if the five-movement suite to Lev Arnshtam’s 1944 film Zoya – about an 18-year-old partisan who combatted the Nazi invasion – has ever been more lovingly phrased or coloured as here. Whether the score itself deserves such attention, given that it is largely a conflation of quotes, arrangements, hand-me-down patriotism and lachrymose heroics, may be a moot point. But without knowledge of this and various other film scores from the war years and shortly after (some of which are even cruder), it’s impossible to gain a three-dimensional view of Shostakovich’s art.

The seven-movement Suite on Finnish Themes was a commission in the early days of the 1939 Russo-Finnish War, carried out before the Red Army’s setbacks, then understandably forgotten, only to re-emerge from the archives in 2001. By the nature of the task, the music is even more anonymous than Zoya. Yet even when engaged in such hackwork, there’s never any doubting Shostakovich’s professionalism, and his delicately scored backgrounds sound like just what the Party ordered.

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