'Epic' will do as a shorthand description for the fiercely dotted figures in cellos and basses that open this symphony and recur as its motto, but the violin melody that arrives on the second page, after those figures have quietened, is more difficult to describe. Taking his cue from the melody's obvious unease, and the fact that Shostakovich asks for its first eight bars to be given the pale tone quality that comes from playing close to the finger-board, Bychkov gives it a blanched pallor, plays it at a barely audible pppp and slows the tempo markedly. That motion is perceptible at all is a tribute to his control, but the slackening of speed is not marked in the score. Later in the exposition, where cellos and basses reply to a wandering idea high in the violins Shostakovich goes out of his way to insist on no change of tempo, but again Bychkov slows down almost to immobility.
The faster sections of the movement are up to tempo or above it; it is the extremity of rubato that causes Bychkov to add over two minutes to the timing of Rostropovich's by no means hasty reading on Teldec. Bychkov's extremes are always, I'm sure, in the interest of underlining the dramatic variety of landscape the movement passes through, but they run the risk that the landscape won't be perceived as unified. The heart-breaking cor anglais solo after the movement's climax is less moving than it should be; it lacks tragic inevitability. The two scherzos both go well, with real attack and impetus and some formidable brass-playing, but in the passacaglia and finale there is again a lack of cumulation: the finale's coda is impressively hushed but an instability of tempo robs it of real stillness, and the string theme winding down to that coda is phrased with irritatingly finicky rubato (Shostakovich marks precisely where he wants the tempo to slacken and then to pick up). Nor do I find the orchestral balance especially agreeable: the very first entry of the trumpets, piercing through the strings, ought at least to be audible; the Berlin strings themselves sound uncharacteristically over-bright at times.
Apart from the admirable Rostropovich, Haitink's severely magisterial account (Decca) still commands respect, while Mravinsky's (Philips: Mravinsky was the work's creator and dedicatee) has a unique, awesome vehemence.'