This is much more of a revised edition than a straightforward reissue of an earlier HMV set (SLS5025, 12/75—nla). It now occupies, for one thing, 12 records instead of 13, the worthwhile saving having been achieved by omitting a not very interesting cantata and some extracts from Shostakovich's early ballets that were used in the original version as fill-ups, by recasting the order of the symphonies (they are no longer arranged chronologically) and by rather awkwardly splitting the finale of the Leningrad over two sides. More importantly, the set as first issued had to be something of a collaborative enterprise, since no conductor then had recorded all 15 works: nine of them were directed by Kondrashin, the remainder being shared between Mravinsky, Svetlanov and Maxim Shostakovich. the great interest of the new compilation is that it makes available for the first time in the West a complete Shostakovich cycle by one of his finest Russian interpreters.
The questions to be asked of the set are the same as were put to its predecessor ten years ago: are the performances as a whole reliable ones? Are the recordings of a standard that I can live with? Are there other performances or recordings that are so much better that I am going to find myself duplicating so many symphonies that the price advantage of this set will be outweighed? My answers would be, respectively, ''they are'', ''on the whole yes, but standards have changed since 1975 (certainly since 1962, the date of the earliest recording here)'' and ''ah, now you're asking!''—there really have been a great many superb Shostakovich performances issued on record during the last decade.
I should myself be perfectly content with the first four symphonies in this box: all excellent readings, and the only one that is beginning to sound on the elderly side, the Fourth, has a gripping urgency to it that must surely derive from the then very recent memory of the work's notoriously long-delayed premiere (under Kondrashin) in Moscow in 1961—a historic document and worthy of any Shostakovich collection. The Fifth, however, I can only assume to be here solely for the sake of completeness: it was recorded as long ago as 1966, and would thus have been available for inclusion in the original set if anyone had thought it superior to Maxim Shostakovich's version, which alas it is not. The recording is dullish, one of the kettle-drums is painfully out-of-tune in the finale, and in both outer movemebts Kondrashin's fondness for pushing the tempo forward is taken to extremes. The sense of ruthlessness at some points in the moderato and the hollowness of the finale's triumph are thereby accentuated (this conductor's perception of the dark ambiguities in Shostakovich's music was outstandingly sharp), but at the cost of ignoring speed-changes that the composer asks for in the first case and of a confused gabble of notes in the second. For much the same reason, though to a lesser degree, I suspect that I should soon feel the need for a more measured account of the Sixth, but Kondrashin's reading of the Leningrad (like the Fifth it is a recording new to the West, but with much more impact to the sound) is a very different matter. It is a strong, serious and often subtle reading: the way that darkness gradually overshadows the lyricism of the second movement, the Mahlerian wildness at the centre of the third and the perception that the finale has much more of grim endurance and sombre resolve than victory to it all struck me as most impressive. The Eighth (despite some more slightly over-urgent tempos) and the Ninth Symphonies are both finely done, too, as is the Tenth, which has an individual, stoic quality that is arresting (it casts an absorbing light on the puzzling allegretto, especially); the Eighth and Ninth give points to more recent rivals in terms of recording, but as performances these are not unequal competitors.
Kondrashin seems to have a reservation or two about the Eleventh and Twelfth Symphonies: both have a straightforward but somewhat mechanical brilliance. In the three late works, however, there is no doubt that we are in the presence of a superbly equipped musician, stirred and inspired by the eloquence of the music to communicate matters of passionate earnestness. Number 13, Babiy Yar, was first performed by Kondrashin in circumstances of unparalleled fraughtness (the composer and the performers were all grimly confident that the concert would be banned by the Soviet authorities at the last moment) and although this, the first Russian recording of the work, was not made until nine years later, the power of the reading and the vehemence of the choral singing recapture that occasion with spine-chilling immediacy. Number 14 is even more electrifying, if anything: the soloists are a bit close (as they were in Maxim Shostakovich's version in the original set), but who would wish to be further removed from such soloists as these? Nesterenko is black as night and overwhelmingly expressive in the cumulative sequence of songs Nos. 7, 8 and 9, Tselovalnik is vibrantly edgy, pungently Russian, but quite able to fine her voice down to a child-like purity in No. 4—this is a great performance, with superb orchestral playing and an excitingly immediate recording. Kondrashin's Fifteenth, too, is of exceptional quality, a reading of triumphantly justified exaggerations: febrile energy intensified by a slightly fast tempo in the first movement, drama by the reluctantly relinquished quiet of the allegretto and, in the finale, a delicate, almost languorous pallor that casts the shattering passacaglia and the mysterious clockwork whirring with which Shostakovich ended his career as a symphonist into disquieting relief.
To summarize, if I were a recent convert to Shostakovich and wanted to acquire all the symphonies for a relatively modest outlay I should be strongly tempted by this set. If I already owned four or five of them in outstanding performances and recordings, however (Haitink, Previn, Karajan), I should probably give it a miss and look to more recent accounts to complete the cycle, especially if the highest quality of sound were an important criterion; but in that case I should hope that HMV would before long issue separately Kondrashin's versions of Nos. 13, 14 and 15.'