SHOSTAKOVICH The Execution of Stepan Razin
Ashkenazy in Helsinki for conflict-fuelled Shostakovich
View record and artist detailsRecord and Artist Details
Composer or Director: Dmitri Shostakovich
Genre:
Vocal
Label: Ondine
Magazine Review Date: 12/2013
Media Format: CD or Download
Media Runtime: 66
Mastering:
DDD
Catalogue Number: ODE1225-2
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 |
Author: David Fanning
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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