Classical CD Reviews: Estonian Festival Orchestra’s Shostakovich
artsfuse.org
Jonathan Blumhofer
29.01.2018
Shostakovich’s Symphony no. 6 is, arguably, his strangest and most difficult multi-movement symphony to pull off in performance. The problems owe both to the score’s structure – a mammoth first movement followed by two shorter ones – and the music’s expressive content: the opening movement is a searing, if unbalanced, essay, followed by a pair of raucous, irreverent episodes. It’s a piece that’s thrown more than a few fine conductors for a loop.
Just don’t tell that to Paavo Järvi and the Estonian Festival Orchestra (EFO), whose new recording (for Alpha) of the piece (paired with the op. 110b Chamber Symphony) is probing and excellent.
You know this is a great Shostakovich Six from the way Järvi and his crew approach that perplexing first movement. On paper it’s lopsided, with a rather flowing first third followed by spare, recitative-like writing over much of its next two thirds. Yet you don’t really notice that structural instability in this performance for a couple of reasons.
The first is tempo. Järvi’s is a reading that is notably fluent and never dawdles. At the same time, it doesn’t rush over anything it shouldn’t. His sense of pacing throughout is logical and reasoned – but, at the same time, well-attuned to the music’s expressive features. The opening section offers plenty of momentum, but so do the soloistic parts that follow: there’s a sense of heartbeat and pulse in this interpretation that brings this complicated movement impressively to life.
The second characteristic is the EFO’s playing, which is – for lack of a better word – brilliant throughout. String tone is warm but uncompromising. Woodwinds and brass are perfectly secure, pitch-wise. And the percussion offers a sort of Mahlerian menace that jumps out powerfully. The movement’s moments of true warmth – the chorale that appears near the end, the reprise of the opening material – speak with an intensity and conviction that’s thoroughly lived and entirely of the moment.
So, in their different expressive ways, are the subsequent movements. The second, opening with a superb account of its rowdy clarinet solo, wears itself out sooner than not; the last, is taken at a breathtaking clip and seems to banish the foul memories of the first movement. Only it doesn’t quite – which is rather the music’s point.
Filling out the disc is Abram Stasevich’s arrangement of the String Quartet no. 8 for string orchestra and timpani. Maybe it’s the addition of the drum – more likely it’s the sheer ferocity of the EFO’s playing – but I found this a far more convincing adaptation and orchestral reading of the piece than Dmitri Sitkoevsky’s more familiar strings-only setting. As in the Symphony, the orchestra’s playing drives furiously (the second and third movements, in particular, are ferocious) while the music’s blistering pathos burns through every queasy phrase.
In all, this is an unsettling performance of a deeply disturbing, if familiar, piece. It’s one with which you really can’t go wrong.
http://artsfuse.org/167582/classical-cd-reviews-estonian-festival-orchestras-shostakovich-and-andrew-manzes-mendelssohn-vol-2/
Jonathan Blumhofer
29.01.2018
Paavo Järvi and the Estonian Festival Orchestra present a probing and excellent version of Shostakovich’s Symphony no. 6
Shostakovich’s Symphony no. 6 is, arguably, his strangest and most difficult multi-movement symphony to pull off in performance. The problems owe both to the score’s structure – a mammoth first movement followed by two shorter ones – and the music’s expressive content: the opening movement is a searing, if unbalanced, essay, followed by a pair of raucous, irreverent episodes. It’s a piece that’s thrown more than a few fine conductors for a loop.
Just don’t tell that to Paavo Järvi and the Estonian Festival Orchestra (EFO), whose new recording (for Alpha) of the piece (paired with the op. 110b Chamber Symphony) is probing and excellent.
You know this is a great Shostakovich Six from the way Järvi and his crew approach that perplexing first movement. On paper it’s lopsided, with a rather flowing first third followed by spare, recitative-like writing over much of its next two thirds. Yet you don’t really notice that structural instability in this performance for a couple of reasons.
The first is tempo. Järvi’s is a reading that is notably fluent and never dawdles. At the same time, it doesn’t rush over anything it shouldn’t. His sense of pacing throughout is logical and reasoned – but, at the same time, well-attuned to the music’s expressive features. The opening section offers plenty of momentum, but so do the soloistic parts that follow: there’s a sense of heartbeat and pulse in this interpretation that brings this complicated movement impressively to life.
The second characteristic is the EFO’s playing, which is – for lack of a better word – brilliant throughout. String tone is warm but uncompromising. Woodwinds and brass are perfectly secure, pitch-wise. And the percussion offers a sort of Mahlerian menace that jumps out powerfully. The movement’s moments of true warmth – the chorale that appears near the end, the reprise of the opening material – speak with an intensity and conviction that’s thoroughly lived and entirely of the moment.
So, in their different expressive ways, are the subsequent movements. The second, opening with a superb account of its rowdy clarinet solo, wears itself out sooner than not; the last, is taken at a breathtaking clip and seems to banish the foul memories of the first movement. Only it doesn’t quite – which is rather the music’s point.
Filling out the disc is Abram Stasevich’s arrangement of the String Quartet no. 8 for string orchestra and timpani. Maybe it’s the addition of the drum – more likely it’s the sheer ferocity of the EFO’s playing – but I found this a far more convincing adaptation and orchestral reading of the piece than Dmitri Sitkoevsky’s more familiar strings-only setting. As in the Symphony, the orchestra’s playing drives furiously (the second and third movements, in particular, are ferocious) while the music’s blistering pathos burns through every queasy phrase.
In all, this is an unsettling performance of a deeply disturbing, if familiar, piece. It’s one with which you really can’t go wrong.
http://artsfuse.org/167582/classical-cd-reviews-estonian-festival-orchestras-shostakovich-and-andrew-manzes-mendelssohn-vol-2/
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