Dmitri Shostakovich: Symphony No. 4 - Bernard Haitink

On this CD:

1. Symphony No. 4 in C Minor, Op. 43
Composed by Dmitry Shostakovich
Performed by London Philharmonic Orchestra
Conducted by Bernard Haitink

Tracks:

Symphony No.4 In C Minor, Op. 43: Allegretto poco moderato -
Symphony No.4 In C Minor, Op. 43: Presto
Symphony No.4 In C Minor, Op. 43: Moderato con moto
Symphony No.4 In C Minor, Op. 43: Largo -
Symphony No.4 In C Minor, Op. 43: Allegro

Customer Reviews:

DSCH's first symphonic masterpiece.......2003-02-07

This is a brilliant performance of Shostakovich's 4th, composed in 1936 and not performed until 1961, during the Kruschev thaw. It is a massive, sprawling work that contains within it all of the characteristics the mature composer would pursue for the rest of his life. While not as immediately memorable as the 5th, 8th or 10th, it clearly stands with DSCH's major works in scope, ambition, and accomplishment. Haitink and the London Philharmonic are heroic in their realization of this heroic music.

It is an irony of massive proportions that, having withdrawn the complex 4th for fear of the repercussions at the height of Stalin's terror, DSCH put forward instead the grotesque, mock-triumphant 5th, which will stand forever as a vivid expression of what it felt like to live through that terror. Very interesting what can be made of music, especially when there are no lyrics to pin down the meaning!

An overwhelming recording of an overwhelming work.......2002-08-20

Is there any other work in the symphonic repertoire boasting this number of minor seconds, I wonder? Not until I acquired a score of this incredible masterpiece did I realize that some of the sounds that I thought were, say, strange kinds of horn-trills, were actually an A and a G sharp grinding against each other in the same octave, and causing the weird oscillations I mistook for a trill. Effects like these testify to the tremendous sonic imagination Shostakovich must have possessed, and this work is full of such otherworldly sounds. Only listen to the end of the second movement, where the ghostly menuetto evaporates over the obsessively ticking clockwork of wood blocks and side drum - it is time running out: a musical vignette that the composer tellingly reused in the final pages of his final symphony.
This work is brimming with such inspirations, some wild, some deeply moving. To my mind it is easily the greatest of Shostakovich's 15 efforts in this genre, and one of the greatest symphonies of the 20th century all round. It is a work that still sounds utterly contemporary and relevant today, a modern piece in the best sense of the word: its speaks a language that has direct impact and appeal. There is much anger, anguish and desolation, but at times the mood abruptly changes into wry humour and even a (very) occasional burst of joy. All of this is moulded into a post-modernist collage-like structure. It isn't easy listening, but it is a thoroughly cogent and gripping musical experience, unlike those unworldly academic experiments that infested the second half of that century. Many approaches are possible to a work so multi-faceted. Among Russian recordings Rozhdestvensky's (Olympia) is very impressive, who opts for the brutally vitriolic approach, sometimes crossing the border from music-making into committing acts of violence. Rattle's recording on EMI highlights the modernist tendencies and stunning harmonies of this work in a generally more objective approach. Järvi, in an impressively recorded take for Chandos, went Mahlerian. And Haitink on this Decca disc has yet another perspective on offer. His reading has an inexorable, dark majesty, with the long stretches of brooding desolation compellingly characterized. It is big, patient and rugged, and it is also a reading of remarkable beauty, not an adjective that springs to mind easily with this work. The recording, though 20 years old, is more sumptuous and detailed than any other I know; for once for instance the manic ostinato of the timpani during the final C-major peroration is clearly audible. Even in the thickest textures, like the psychopathic march following the famous string fugato in the first movement, the sound never deteriorates into a noisy blur, as it often does: themes and instrument groups retain their separate recognizability. (That fugato, by the way, is itself taken at nothing near the manic speed preferred by some conductors, which improves clarity but takes away some of the sheer madness of it).
As we are used of him, Haitink steers clear from overblown histrionics, but lets the notes and the architecture speak for themselves. He doesn't turn the music into a roller coaster ride like others have done, which to some listeners may be a disappointment. With him it is rather like witnessing a tremendous and catastrophic natural event unfolding slowly but inevitably and with an unsettling beauty also, like a volcano erupting. After the final faux-climax subsides, the ensuing bleak emptiness, with the restless heartbeat of timpani and double bass, and violins lost in icy musings, turns into a vision of eternity itself - not in the cozy biblical sense of course, but in that of astronomy, with the celesta aptly drawing its question mark across the infinite senseless vista's. Well, don't waste any more of your time on my lyrical digressions... better buy this disc!

A marvelous interpretation of a difficult work.......2001-10-14

Haitink clearly "gets it." This work has been recorded poorly by others, but Haitink and the LPO clearly understand that Shostakovich was trying to create something new within the symphonic form. The political climate that surrounded the creation and release work affects how one listens to it, and Hiatink makes sure the dissonance is clear without using it to punish the audience as some Shostakovich interpreters have. The only recording of this work that I prefer is Previn's with the Chicago Symphony (gotta love the CSO horns doing Shostakovich!). Nonetheless, this is a great recording. My only small wish is that Haitink would have added more tension to the remarkable conclusion of this work.

Shostakovich: Symphony No 14, etc / Varady, Fischer-Dieskau, Wenkel; Haitink

Average customer rating:

A Richly Nuanced Performance of Shostakovich's Symphony of Death
Please note: This isn't in Russian
Shostakovich And Matters Of Death
Utterly spiritual!
Surprisingly, Perhaps, a Dimly-Burning Wick of Hope

Shostakovich: Symphony No 14, etc / Varady, Fischer-Dieskau, Wenkel; Haitink
Dmitri Shostakovich , Bernard Haitink , Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau , Julia Varady , Concertgebouw Orchestra Amsterdam , and Ortrun Wenkel
Manufacturer: Decca
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

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ASIN: B00000IP3J
Release Date: 2000-08-08

Tracks:

Symphony No.14, Op.135: De profundis
Symphony No.14, Op.135: Malaguena
Symphony No.14, Op.135: Loreley
Symphony No.14, Op.135: Le Suicide
Symphony No.14, Op.135: Les Attentives I
Symphony No.14, Op.135: Les Attentives II
Symphony No.14, Op.135: A la Sante
Symphony No.14, Op.135: Reponse des cosaques zaparogues...
Symphony No.14, Op.135: O Delvig, Delvig!
Symphony No.14, Op.135: Der Tod des Dichters
Symphony No.14, Op.135: Schluss-Stuck
6 Poems Of Marina Tsvetaeva, Op.143a: My Poems
6 Poems Of Marina Tsvetaeva, Op.143a: Such Tenderness
6 Poems Of Marina Tsvetaeva, Op.143a: Hamlet's Dialogue With His Conscience
6 Poems Of Marina Tsvetaeva, Op.143a: The Poet And The Tsar
6 Poems Of Marina Tsvetaeva, Op.143a: No, The Drum Beat
6 Poems Of Marina Tsvetaeva, Op.143a: To Anna Akhmatova

Customer Reviews:

A Richly Nuanced Performance of Shostakovich's Symphony of Death.......2006-02-04

Despite the fact that there are multiple recordings of Shostakovich's deeply moving Symphony No. 14, this rather old but remastered recording is unique in the quality of performance: Bernard Haitink conducts his Concertgebouw Orchestra and elected to use non-Slavic singers Julia Varady and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau who in turn sing the poems in their original languages rather than the Russian translations used in the original premiere. The effect is staggeringly beautiful and if one must choose a single recording of this symphony, this would be the one that captures the essence of Shostakovich's vision.

Written in 1969 while ill, Shostakovich was naturally achingly concerned about his impending death and in response to his admiration for Moussorgsky's 'Songs and Dances of Death' he wished to make his musical statement about the end of life. 'They wanted the finale to be comforting, to say that death is only the beginning. But it's not a beginning, it's the real end, there will be nothing afterwards, nothing.' And with this grim concept he selected eleven poems by a varied group of poets who mostly died young: Garcia Lorca, Guillaume Appollinaire, Wilhelm Kuchelberger, and Rainer Maria Rilke. The poems are sung by soprano and baritone solo and in duet, and the beauty of Varady and Fischer-Dieskau intoning the words in Spanish, French, Russian, and German somehow gives the poetry more immediacy.

The orchestration is for twenty-one performers: two percussionist, celesta, and eighteen strings. The writing is transparent and delicate with some of the most gorgeous sectional ensemble playing (particularly for cellos and double bass) Shostakovich ever wrote. Haitink serves the score well. As an additional bonus on this CD, Haitink conducts the `Six Poems of Marina Tsvetaeva' beautifully sung by Ortrun Wenkel. For this reviewer the experience of hearing this chamber work that speaks so profoundly about death in the wonder of the acoustic of Disney Hall in Los Angeles makes this symphony emphatically one of Shostakovich's finest works. Esa-Pekka Salonen with the LA Philharmonic approached the work with such humanity and utter clarity of performance, using as soloists Matthias Goerne and brilliant young Russian dramatic soprano Tatiana Pavlovskaya to breathe meaning and incredible atmosphere that the effect was one of those once in a lifetime experiences. If only THAT performance could be added to the recorded repertoire.... Highly recommended. Grady Harp, February 06

Please note: This isn't in Russian.......2005-09-29

I haven't researched the various versions of the Shostakovich 14th, but my other CD under Bernstein is sung entirely in Russian, even though the poems come from other languages as well. I believe that's the standard way, but here Haitink's singers adapt to French, Spanish, etc. as these languages come up. This gives the original poets their native voices back, which i like. It also eliminates one layer of Slavic lugubriousness, which frankly can become quite oppressive when the texts are performed entirely in Russian.

Shostakovich And Matters Of Death.......2005-08-06

Like Gustav Mahler before him, Dmitri Shostakovich, towards the end of his life, began concerning himself with matters of death in his works. Here was a composer who had seen the horrors of two world wars, seen his artistic ambitions constricted by the demands of Joseph Stalin, and seen his older contemporary Sergei Prokofiev suffer the tortures of the damned under Stalin's reign of terror, and yet Shostakovich had survived and succeeded, largely thanks to sage champions on this side of the Iron Curtain such as Bernstein, Stokowski, and Ormandy.

But in his own ironic way, by the 1960s, he was dealing with Death itself, as can be gauged from his Fourteenth Symphony, a work in eleven parts that utilizes texts from writers such as Federico Garcia Lorca, Guillaume Apollinaire, Wilhelm Kuchelbecker, and Rainer Maria Rilke. The symphony, which requires soprano, bass, percussion, and string orchestra, was composed by Shostakovich in 1969 and premiered by his fellow composer Benjamin Britten in England in 1970. It remains thoroughly modern, but its subject is timeless. The same is true for the song cycle "6 Poems Of Marina Tsvetaeva", which he first scored for contralto and piano in 1973 and orchestrating them the following year, one year before he passed away.

Featuring Julia Varady, Ortrun Wenkel, and the legendary Dietrich Fisher-Dieskau, this recording is equally stunning for the conducting of the Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam by its longtime music director Bernard Haitink. Though these works were recorded a quarter century ago as part of Haitink's complete survey of Shostakovich's symphonies (a set that also included the London Philharmonic), the recording has aged fantastically well, and the three-prong combination of vocalists, orchestra, and conductor are superb in bringing Shotakovich's visions to the forefront, though they don't skip over the ever-present irony that was a trademark of the composer. A must-have for anyone with a taste for modern music in general, and Shostakovich in particular.

Utterly spiritual!.......2005-07-26

Mondelli and kph37's reviews are really into the spirit of the work, and I have no complaints with them at all.

There are political considerations on two levels. Let me dispose of the first quickly, though I don't mean to do so, because Haitink is truly one of the great conductors of the 20th century. But let's face it that he got caught up in the conductor contest of the Post-Reiner era, when recording companies were elevating Their Man over the others in a marketing joust. Poor Bernard was, in my opinion, a victim in this competition. He was the one who saw the value in letting us hear the inner parts, apart from the raging brass of Solti and colorful antics of Bernstein. Mercy!

As for Fidi's shortness of breath or trailing line, well, I think this was the reason for staging him in the work. Imagine, by contrast, bringing in, say, the great Erich Kunz. The bass-baritone portions of this work are those of resignation, not of confidence. For the sake of the poetry, Fidi was perfect. He is not supposed to be the bombast vocalist. His is the voice of sad resignation.

Now, the other political level, that of the composer. Shostakovich lived under Stalin's thumb, to an extent that no composer today can imagine. Some understanding of history is in order. Dmitri was in a life and death struggle with the homicidal maniac controlling the former Soviet Union. Some understanding of art requires an understanding of history. And, therefore, of empathy with Dmitri.

All told, this is a sublime recording. In future generations, the work will be reviewed only from the technical point of view. It takes musicians who lived through that ghastly horror of the German invasion of Russia, of one racist terrorist regime invading another.

This is a very perturbing work. Who could have done it better than those who lived through it?

Then, Ortrum Wenkel's performance of the Tsvetaeva songs should be given more attention. Yes, they are pretty literal readings. But aren't the works written the same dead pan way? These are hardly folksongs in the sense of Mahler or Britten, but introspective pieces. I really like her work here.

Buy this CD it while it lasts.

Surprisingly, Perhaps, a Dimly-Burning Wick of Hope.......2002-01-24

This is a clean and exciting performance of the fourteenth symphony; I still remember the chills I felt, hearing it the first time some seventeen years ago. This is the sort of piece which only Edward Gorey would like to listen to on a daily basis, but it is an exquisitely artistic outpouring of grief, rage, despair ... yet not, I think, of absolute resignation.

Most of the texts have to do with death, and almost none of the texts regards death in any light other than hopeless, or at the least sardonic. But there is one note something discordant to the otherwise unremitting gloom.

"O Delvig, Delvig!" always struck me as the heart of the fourteenth symphony, all the more for its warm, passionate cello choir, standing in stark contrast to the "flint-faced" sardonicism ("Malagueña," "Les Attentives I & II," "Réponse des cosaques zaporogues") and the externally-dramatic bleakness ("Lorelei," "À la Santé," and the bookends "De Profundis" and "Der Tod des Dichters") of most of the rest of the symphony.

And here at what, musically, I have always felt to be the quiet, self-effacing heart of the piece, we find a text which differs, not sharply perhaps, but significantly, from the unrelieved tone of despair-at-darkness of all the rest of the texts, which (with epochal significance) are more recent ... the sharp-relieved word-paintings of Garcia Lorca, the urbane rationalism and withering wit of Appolinaire. Here, in the company of some of the world's most highly-regarded poets (to add Rilke) we find a highly personal dedicatory poem, written by the unknown-outside-Russia Küchelbecker.

Baron Anton Antonovich Delvig (1798-1831) and Wilhelm Karlovich Küchelbecker (1797-1846) were both friends of Pushkin's, from their school days at the Imperial Lyceum at Tsarskoye Selo (where there still stands a magnificent palace with extensive grounds). All three were poets, men of education and refinement. Delvig was packed off to Siberia, and executed as a revolutionary.

O Delvig, Delvig! What reward is there
for noble deeds and verse?
Where and what is the joy in talent
amongst villains and fools?
In Juvenal's austere hand
the dreaded lash whistles at the villains
and wipes the color from their cheeks.
The power of the tyrants trembled

O Delvig, Delvig, what is persecution?
Immortality is the reward
both of valiant, inspired deeds
and of sweet singing!
Thus our union will not die,
proud, joyful and free!
In happiness and grief, firm is the union
of lovers of the eternal Muse!

The poem fits into Shostakovich's work with conveniently thorough aptness. The two obscurer poets were friends of Pushkin's, himself not only the Great Man of Russian letters, but an artist who found that his works needed to pass a censor. Delvig was a poet who got caught in the wheels of politics, and paid with his life.

Yet the message of the poem is not gloom alone; it is not simply a weeping at the injustices of society against Art and the Individual. It is an assurance that noble deeds and sweet singing are rewarded with immortality, and that the artistic bond of the friends will never die, either. The poem is actually a positive response to external grief.

For all the unrelenting gloom of the rest of the symphony, for all that Shostakovich is quoted as saying, "Death is it, after death, there is nothing" ... for all this, I don't believe that Shostakovich could have LIVED like that ... and certainly here in the fourteenth symphony, he did not quite write like that. This text, its musical treatment, and its place in the shape of the symphony, all this together is the dimly burning wick which would not be blown out.

And too, the one text set in the symphony which has nothing in particular to do with death ("Réponse des cosaques zaporogues") is about rage at, and contempt for, despots, expressed by a fiercely proud, free people. This reminds me that another piece of Shostakovich's which I have long meant to investigate is "The Execution of Stepan Razin," a cossack folk-hero who is a symbol of the spiritual power of free resistance against an oppressor.

And the ending of the fourteenth symphony is not the bleak, still resignation of "De Profundis/Der Tod des Dichters" ... but an ironic clip-clop "Conclusion"... and the closing musical gesture is a clipped, tutti, raging in the strings.

Certainly a great deal of his experience would teach Shostakovich despair, and it would have taken an extraordinarily strong and determined character to resist learning so.

Yet in this work, I see more than just the cynicism. You can be taught to say things, taught even to feel things as though they are practically inside you, and a lot of the life you step through can be about those things ... and yet, down underneath all the accreted layers, you may feel that, really, it isn't, cannot be, true.

Like Martin Luther King's "there cannot be great disappointment where there is not great love" ... I wonder if the sharpness, the bitterness, is a refusal to accept. At any rate, I do not see it as an idea he has come to peace with ... at least, not in the fourteenth symphony.

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