Album Reviews

Composed in 1937, Shostakovich’s dramatic 5th symphony is cinematic in scope and thematically rich and varied. Though 20th century modern in its angular musical approach, it retains elements of Tchaikovsky’s romantic 19th century, though many of the musical gestures more closely resemble those of Shostakovich's contemporary, Sergei Prokofiev. In fact if you’re familiar with Prokofiev’s “Lt. Kije Suite” you will hear some similarities along with some touches of Rimsky-Korsakov.

While Prokofiev’s homage chronicles a soldier’s life from youth through death, Shostakovich says his 5th symphony is about a man coming to grips with his life experiences and “stabilizing his personality.” Certainly the bleakness of the communist experience pours forth from the score, purposeful or otherwise, but in the end optimism triumphs.

When you read the liner notes highlighting Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic’s triumphant 17 country tour of the middle east and Europe under the auspices of the President’s Special International Program for Cultural Presentations back in 1958, your heart will break as you realize how far the world and America has sunk in many ways since.

The orchestra played in Lebanon and in Turkey and of course multiple times in the USSR on a goodwill trip presaging a summit between Krushchev and Eisenhower. So yes, the USSR is gone but can you imagine an American symphony orchestra’s “goodwill” trip to Lebanon today? I can’t, and that’s sad.

Anyway, this is an accessible composition packed with memorable themes and melodies, colors and emotions. Foreboding, brutality and finally beauty and elation fill the score as it progresses from a broad horizon of positive and negative life experiences to its dramatic, optimistic and grand conclusion.

Columbia Records had a mediocre sonic track record, with some good ones mixed amongst the mostly overly distant, overly reverberant and tonally metallic undistinguished releases. Unlike RCA, Mercury and others, the label couldn’t be bothered with venues and engineers most of the time, leaving listeners with an institutional aftertaste, though of course the label retained an enviable roster of performers and orchestras.

This edition of Shostakovich’s 5th is considered by many who know far more about this subject than do I, to be one of the finest recorded. I have no idea who engineered, though some assume it’s staff engineer Fred Plaut, best known for recording Kind of Blue and other jazz gems on the label. I don’t know where it was recorded but it sounds more like a large, relatively dry studio than a concert hall. Fortunately, it has not been “enhanced” with obvious artificial reverb.

(After this was written, I learned the performance was recorded at Boston Symphony Hall, a fact that I find difficult to believe, given the relatively dry acoustic. Miking must have been closer than I thought and perhaps acoustic treatment was added to the hall).

The perspective is moderately close, the stage is very wide and there is somewhat of a hole in the middle with the strings predominating on either side but the overall presentation is pleasingly spacious and harmonically while I wouldn’t call it rich sounding, the Columbia metallic string sheen is thankfully mostly absent, thanks in part to a good recording effort and an especially good mastering job by Kevin Gray and Cisco’s Robert Pincus.

The bigger stringed instruments have been captured with great tonal, textural and dynamic authority as have the piano’s lower keys, the brass and the powerful tympani wallops. I can’t imagine the original was anywhere near as good as this, but that’s only based on experience with Columbia originals in general and not this record specifically. The tape hiss (and there’s a good deal of it) has been retained in order to present the full range of high frequencies in the recording and whatever space the microphones were able to capture.

A solid reissue of a long-treasured performance.