Specs & Pricing

Music
Shostakovich:
Symphony No. 11,
Classical SACD
“The Year 1905.”
WDR Symphony Orchestra,
Cologne, Semyon Bychkov, conductor.
François Eckert, producer; Christoph Gronarz, engineer. Hybrid multichannel.
Avie 2062.
Eleni Karaindrou:
Elegy of the
Uprooting.
Manfred Eicher, producer. ECM New
Series 0007327.
Color her blue. In her first concert recording
for ECM, Greek composer and pianist Eleni
Karaindrou seamlessly weaves samples
of her sad but beautiful film and stage
music from 13 scores spanning 22 years,
producing a stunning career retrospective
that transcends genre. The result is a wholly
new body of work that she calls Elegy of
the Uprooting. It is a remarkable, almost
otherworldly, showcase for her intensely
moving songs of love and loss.
At the heart of this
sprawling elegy is
haunting music from
two of Karaindrou’s
best-known works
The two-disc set, recorded over three
nights in Athens during spring 2005, enlists
110 musicians and singers. Those include
the Camerata Orchestra, conducted by
Alexandros Myrat; a traditional instruments
ensemble; the Hellenic Radio/Television
Choir, under the direction of Antonis
Kontogeorgiou; and singer Maria Farantouri.
Karaindrou has had a long association
with several musicians that appear here,
some having recorded with her for two
decades. Indeed, she and Farantouri briefly
performed in a folk group in the 1960s and
it was Farantouri—who would go on to
become one of Greece’s best-loved singers
Shostakovich: Symphony No.7, “Leningrad.”
Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Mariss Jansons,
conductor. Everett Porter, producer and engineer. Hybrid multichannel.
RCO Live 06002.
As the Shostakovich centenary year winds down, we get two more recordings of two
of the composer’s most popular and programmatic symphonies. But what were the
programs The Seventh Symphony, ecstatically received at home and in the West at the
time of its creation during World War II, was assumed to depict the siege of Leningrad—
the invasion of the Germans, their engagement by the Red Army, and, in the finale,
the Motherland’s glorious victory. But others hear the work instead as a retrospective
look at the Stalinist horrors of the 1930s. Likewise, the Eleventh, composed in 1957,
has movement titles that quite specifically refer to events in January of 1905, when the
Czar’s soldiers massacred hundreds of protesters in front of the Winter Palace in St.
Petersburg (soon to be Leningrad). Many detect in this piece a commentary on the brutal
suppression of the 1956 popular uprising in Hungary.
Mariss Jansons and the Concertgebouw
provide a glimpse of how these symphonies
might be viewed in 50 years, at a distance
from the tumultuous events of the twentieth
century, devoid of any particular political
program. The conductor implores us—in the
notes and, especially, with his performance—
to listen to the Seventh, “with its enormous
range of emotions and experiences,” as we
would a Mahler symphony. Janson’s reading
may be less cinematic than others but is no
less exciting. Relieved of the requirement
to continually maintain a pressure-cooker
atmosphere, the two inner movements serve
as a contrasting respite from the turmoil of
the first and fourth. The Adagio, in particular,
achieves a late Mahler-like stillness that nicely sets up the finale. The symphony’s closing
pages are knowingly paced for a grandly exhilarating finish that isn’t overblown, as it so
often is.
With a less rewarding outcome, Semyon Bychkov—another distinguished Russian
conductor leading a fine non-Russian orchestra—also minimizes the film-score nature
of the Eleventh Symphony. At a tad over 59 minutes, this is one of the fastest recordings
around (13 minutes shorter than Mstislav Rostropovich’s absorbing Eleventh on LSO
Live). The opening movement, “The Palace Square,” sounds rushed, missing the hushed
expectancy of competing versions; Shostakovich’s heartrending setting of the Russian
song “You fell as victims” in movement III also seems hurried and underinflected. The
finale, “Toscin,” is more successful, possessing the defiant streak it needs to bring the
work to an adrenaline-producing conclusion.
The RCO Live recording is big, bold, clear, and detailed, the 5.0 surround program
offering a near-holographic presentation of the musicians on stage. There’s excellent
delineation of the smallest dynamic gradients and, particularly in multichannel, the sound
holds together well at the first movement’s gigantic climax. The performance derives
from two January 2006 concerts at the Concertgebouw given before exceptionally quiet
audiences. For Bychkov, Avie’s sonics are best at the lower end of the spectrum, with
beautiful instrumental timbres; the firmly played muted trumpets in “The Palace Square”
are an example. But louder passages can get a bit aggressive in an old-fashioned digital
kind of way if the SACD is played at anything approaching lease-breaking levels, as
Shostakovians are oft inclined to do. AQ
Further Listening: Shostakovich: Symphony No. 7 (Bernstein/Chicago);
Shostakovich: Symphony No. 11 (Rostropovich/LSO) (SACD)
142 December 2006 The Absolute Sound