While there are some genuinely 'historic' performances in this batch of Shostakovich symphonies, the documentation provided—a curious mix of Soviet-style rhetoric and Western revisionist thinking—does not always explain what it is we are being offered. Mravinsky's Eleventh is a case in point. The playing seems inexplicably uneven until you work out that this must be a tape of the work's very first Leningrad performance, a different orchestra and conductor having been employed for the Moscow premiere a few days previously. The opening movement, taken faster than we are used to today, finds the (close-miked) wind understandably nervous. The second, subtitled ''9 January'', is simply terrific, as viscerally exciting a piece of music-making as you could hope to hear. The drawbacks are the asthmatic audience and a dated mono recording (without much tonal variety) that compresses Shostakovich's cliff-edge dynamics into a continuous, muffled mf. Nevertheless, in the absence of Mravinsky's studio recording (Artia, 5/61—nla), this will be essential listening for many readers.
Russian Disc's live relays of the First and Fifth hardly seem to qualify as treasure trove. Svetlanov's conducting style has always been characterized by brash excitement, rather than lofty contemplation or note-for-note verisimilitude, and his gamey account of No. 1 is no exception. Anyone accustomed to the smooth, a tempo balleticism of Kurtz's recently reissued reading will find this Soviet version extraordinarily diffuse, above all in the finale where the deterioration of the original master tape is very apparent. The Fifth fares better under the young Kitaienko. After Svetlanov, he sounds cautious, rightly so given his orchestra's propensity for misreading familiar parts (there are some astonishing gaffes in the Allegretto), but his eloquent slow movement and heavy-footed finale are not without interest. The sound is much better than it is in the coupling; the disc might just appeal to connoisseurs of singular orchestral sonority.
A more intriguing find, Rozhdestvensky's live No. 4 proves similar to his studio recording. The opening movement has none of Ashkenazy's inexorable forward drive. Instead, the abrasive qualities of a less-than-first-rate orchestra are used to point up the violence and unpredictability of the idiom. Unsurprisingly, Rozhdestvensky brings out the ironic elements in the central scherzo—Haitink is much smoother here—and he takes his spacious and wayward approach to extremes in the finale. Even if this is no Beethovenian symphonic argument, it can still be seen as a quasi-Mahlerian one which need not sound quite such a jigsaw as it does here. Dangerously unhurried, the conductor's preoccupation with the comic stylization of genre episodes makes the final peroration more preposterous and anti-heroic than ever. Which is presumably the intention. The vaguely Dadaist atmosphere of a Rozhdestvensky concert is well conveyed by the decent if unspectacular recording.
My next disc is the highlight of the group. The orchestra may not respond to his downbeat with perfect unanimity, but David Oistrakh brings his usual refined sensibility to the quizzical Ninth. In this monumental interpretation, with speeds often slower than usual, the issues seem graver. The second movement is immoderately sluggish, the finale overwhelmingly dark and sombre, eschewing the divertissement element found by Haitink and others without aiming for the sarcastic grimace of Kondrashin's famous 1960s LP (Le Chant du Monde, 5/89—nla). Unlike at least one of the career musicians featured on these discs, Oistrakh was on friendly terms with Galina Vishnevskaya, that great and most relentlessly communicative of sopranos. And it is particularly valuable to have her on CD in Shostakovich's Fourteenth, music written with her voice in mind. Barshai's own Melodiya recording (EMI, 3/71—nla) featured different soloists, and Rostropovich was on the podium when Vishnevskaya herself recorded it subsequently (EMI, 12/75—nla). Only this disinterred tape of the work's second official outing and Moscow premiere can lay claim to absolute authenticity. As you might expect, it's a fascinating document. Whereas Bernstein's rendition (Sony Classical—to be reviewed) seems not inappropriately dour, all passion spent, Barshai and Vishnevskaya rage against the dying of the light in every song, slicing seconds (sometimes minutes) off the timings of more recent Western accounts under Haitink and Jarvi (DG—to be reviewed). Reshetin is superb too, less inclined to histrionics. Despite the exhaustive rehearsals mentioned in her autobiography, Vishnevskaya goes wildly off the rails with the second line of Apollinaire's Le Suicide (at fig. 52), resolutely maintaining her sharp pitch for some bars; elsewhere (even here?) her sheer intensity is unforgettable. Like many in the audience, she makes voluble attempts to clear her throat, not necessarily between items. The terse final song, paced deliberately, concludes with a percussive outburst subsequently deleted from the score—it does not occur in Barshai's studio version. Generally speaking, the sound is close and crude, by no means intolerable but sufficiently prone to distortion to inhibit a general recommendation. It doesn't help that the tape (which must have been hidden when the Rostropovichs were deprived of their Soviet citizenship) picks up fragments of what sounds like a Russian talks programme! The interpretation itself is as moving as any, the disc as indispensable in its way as Kondrashin's Thirteenth (Russian Disc (CD) RDCD11191).
In the Soviet Union, Shostakovich's 'modernist' Second and Third Symphonies were conveniently forgotten until the Ukrainian conductor Igor Blazhkov revived them in the mid-1960s. His Melodiya recording of No. 2 was briefly available here (EMI, 9/71—nla), but this concert performance may well have been the first for decades: we are not told. After Blazhkov's direct and forceful No. 2, Temirkanov's Tenth takes time to make any impact. The first movement is big, self-consciously moulded and just a little flaccid, the scherzo brilliant yet unsatisfying, with the wind placed too far back at the start and the brass coming over like buzz-saws later on. At least Temirkanov finds real conflict in the frustrated self-assertion of the Allegretto and he throws caution to the winds in the frantic jubilation of the finale. The playing is not particularly polished. Again, Haitink's identical pairing is a safer option. But are we to believe there are no finer Tenths in the archives? Given their much-publicized access to the forbidden fruits of Soviet musical life, Russian Disc's selection policy already looks a trifle arbitrary.'