Shostakovich: Symphony No. 8
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Composer: Dmitry ShostakovichConductor: Mariss Jansons
Orchestra: Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra
Edition: Music CD
Format: Live
CD Release Date: 2001-10-23
Music Label: EMI Classics
Soundtracks:
- I: Adagio - Allegro Non Troppo - Adagio
- II: Allegretto
- III: Allegro Non Troppo -
- IV: Largo -
- V: Allegretto
- Mariss Jansons In Rehearsal With The Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra
Free Music Notes for Shostakovich: Symphony No. 8
Free Music Review: Jansons seems uncommitted, and the orchestra is only good
Hit: 3 Stars
When the floodgates opened in 1989 and Russian musicians flocked West after th fall of communism, several rose to elite status. Most people would rank Jansons in the first tier, alaong with gergiev. As conductor of the Royla Concertgebouw he certainly seized the best podium. but this Shostakovich 8th is cautious and conventional, which has become typical of Jansons. His tenure at Pittsburgh was marred by a major heart attack, so one sympathizes. However, this sounds like a second-rate orchestra dutifully going through a second-rate score. There are undeniably moments of gripping tension, especially in the first movement, to remind us that Jansons comes from a prime musical lineage when it comes to Shostakovich. But overall Janson makes the music sound like less than a matter of lfie and death, which it needs to be.
All of Shostakovich's darkest music is difficult to bring off without lapsing into lugubriousness and strident rhetoric. Like the Tenth, which it closely resembles, the Eighth is dominated by a monumental tragic first movement and a biting Scherzo, after which the composer struggles to find an emotional climax but settles for fairly unconvincing, if not vapid, positivity. Even at his grandest, however, Shostakovich's themes skirt banality, so it takes inspired conducting and total commitment to patch over these weaknesses.
Fortunately, Russia has no shortage of conductors who went through the same harrowing conditions as the composer, and the Shostakovich collector has acccess to great recordings from Mravinsky, Kondrashin, and younger maestros like Bychkov and Temirkanov. None of them are absolutely reliable, with the possible exception of the great Mravinsky. His two readings of the Eighth, a commerical one for Philips and a live concert from London on BBC Legends, tower over the field, as the Amazon reviewer states. The young Byhkov had a successful reading on Philips, despite a few reservations, while Rostropovich, performing live with the LSO on their house label, is too coarse and slapdash. Gergive's version on Philips is oddly unconvincing given how great his other Shostakovich recordings are. Among non-Russians, Previn set the standard with an excellent version on EMI followed by an even better remake for DG.
In any event, Jansons falls short when put up against any of these rivals, so I can't get overly excited by the good recorded sound and the high moments when they occur. The rest of his Shostakovich cycle for EMI has been of a piece, I'm afraid.
Shostakovich: Symphony No. 8 Poster
Shostakovich's grim Eighth Symphony was written in 1943 and premiered by its dedicatee, Evgeny Mravinsky, whose recordings of the work still stand supreme. Now, Mariss Jansons, who as a young conductor was mentored by Mravinsky, leads his Pittsburgh players in a stellar concert performance recorded live. Orchestral execution is first-rate, and Jansons doesn't smooth over or prettify the hourlong work, soaked in the composer's bitterness about the Nazi and Stalinist brutality that stamped his life with fear and loathing. The long opening Adagio, with its brooding strings and pitiless brass eruptions, is shattering, as are the following grotesque Allegretto and the relentlessly powerful third movement. The final two movements maintain the bleak mood, though, as so often in Shostakovich, the finale makes half-hearted attempts to recover a measure of joy amid the gloom. Jansons and his orchestra sustain this potent work's intensity throughout, confirming the Eighth as one of the composer's most important and fully realized works. The filler is an interesting rehearsal excerpt. An essential recording of an essential work. --Dan DavisClassical Music CDs
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