Symphony No. 10 in E minor, Op. 93: 4. Andante - Allegro
Herbert von Karajan's digital recording of Shostakovich's Tenth Symphony (the only one of the cycle that he committed to disc) is now issued to mark the Shostakovich centenary in 2006.
Herbert von Karajan's digital recording of Shostakovich's Tenth Symphony (the only one of the cycle that he committed to disc) is now issued to mark the Shostakovich centenary in 2006.
John D. Pilkey | Santa Clarita, CA USA | 01/23/2007
(5 out of 5 stars)
"Before hearing Symphonies 10 and 11, I felt that No. 5 was the most exciting in some passages, No. 7 the most entertaining and No. 8 the profoundest. Nos. 1, 9 and 15 are a bit too cute for my taste, especially the first two movements of No. 1. I agree with critics that the propagandistic No. 12 is too blatant, especially in the finale. Now I am inclined to feel that two symphonies of the the 1950s, No. 10 and 11, are the composers' best. All of Shostakovich's symphonies exhibit well-defined tiers of emotion-- satirical, elegiac and heroic-- witty, profound and stirring. I prefer the heroic, which always seems at least latent and about to break out once the wit and sorrow are pushed aside.
Symphony No. 10 in Karajan's performance is one of the best symphonies I have ever heard by any composer of any period. It has no weak spots and establishes a standard of excellence for 20th century music. It may lack the consistent spiritual loftiness achieved by Bruckner but makes up for it with explosive brilliance. In No. 10 the composer follows slow and tense movements in the first and third with explosions in the second and fourth. Even the first reaches a crescendo of high dynamic intensity; and the emphatic second has to be heard to be believed. The composer will carry the pattern of the slow, faint and tense first movement to a greater extreme in No. 11 where it serves the program purpose of describing the Petrograd winter palace on the eve of the 1905 massacre featured in Eisenstein's film Battleship Potemkin. This program adds interest; but No. 10 is so powerful that it does not need a program."
Sublime Shostakovich, complimented perfectly by Karajan
Ryan Kernaghan | New South Wales, Australia | 01/30/2008
(5 out of 5 stars)
"The idea of recording one of the greatest conductors of the twentieth century, in Karajan, with perhaps the most fascinating of Soviet composers, in Shostakovich, is one of the most exciting prospects in the performance of twentieth century classical music. The idea first became a reality in 1967, when Karajan first recorded the work. This release comes from 1981, and is early in the digital era, so DG's Original Bit Reprocessing is extremely effective in restoring the quality and presence of the performance.
The electrifying Tenth Symphony (1953) is perhaps the composer's greatest work, full of mysterious, shocking and memorable musical ideas. Perhaps the most compelling part of the work is the Stalin-inspired Scherzo, which, in this recording, emerges as one of the most intense movements of the century. The persistent DSCH signature shows this work to almost be auto-biographical, the stoic Shostakovich in perpetual struggle with the enmity of the Stalin phenomenon.
Karajan's reading is magnetic throughout. His own sympathies with the music are clarified by the masterful recording. The Scherzo, I think, can be regarded as the vanguard of the entire work, and the captivation of the 'menace' of Stalin is an absolute requisite if the work's argument is to sound convincing. Unlike a slightly withdrawn and lacklustre performance from the NHK/Ashkenazy collaboration in 2006, Karajan's brass and string sections are so perfectly tuned that the music's inner meaning thunders through to the listener.
An incredible achievement. It remains a pity that Karajan did not explore more of Shostakovich's truly magnificent symphonic canon."
Legendary recording
Ian George Fraser | Brazil | 10/30/2009
(5 out of 5 stars)
"Deutsche Grammophon group this recording as one of their "legendary recordings" and for once this is not merely promoter's hype. Written in 1953 after the death of Stalin, it is one of the key works of 20th century music. It is not an easy ride for any conductor or orchestra. The first movement is full of long, slow introspective passages in which the conductor dare not let the orchestra "go to sleep" as the predominant mood is tense, nervous and anxious - a difficult combination. The most commonly used adjective to describe the second movement is "brutal" (it has often been seen as a portrait of the dictator Stalin himself) and BPO/Karajan play it with appropriate clinical savagery. The final movement is also difficult for conductors due to the extreme contrasts of slow, elegaic passages, with many woodwind solos, and some extremely fast tutti.
It is difficult to imagine a better performance of this challenging symphony than this one. The Berlin Philharmonic seems to have 100 virtuoso soloists playing together and Karajan's instinctive understanding of this of this demanding piece,both musically and intellectually, will rarely be matched. Shostovich was a master of irony and ambiguity and the ending has been described very variously as "unrealistic" and "optimistic tragedy". What ever it is it is not conventional. I'd say "let's just enjoy life and come out fighting"."
DSCH: The definitive Tenth
Tahseen Nakavi | Secunderabad, Andhra Pradesh, India | 05/05/2010
(5 out of 5 stars)
"Shostakovich wrote his tenth symphony in 1953. This was the year Stalin died. The work is in E Minor. The personal statement dimension is confirmed by Shostakovich's use of the initials DSCH (D, E Flat, C, B Natural in German notation) in the Allegretto movement. Robert Layton has written in the GRAMOPHONE, "few works give a deeper insight into the interior landscape of the Russian soul."
The first movement's tragic brooding and the third movement's melancholy define the symphony's mood. Against this mood, the whirlwind scherzo is set. The finale is a sprinting dash. An end to this symphony caused a critic to dub the symphony 'an optimistic tragedy.' The Allegro is a tribute to Stalin. Brutally, the music suggests banality of evil.
Karajan's reading with the Berliners is a great one, for me the definitive.He first conducted this symphony in Berlin in March 1959. In November 1966, he made his first recording of it. The Moscow performance which followed that in May 1969 was a sensation. Solomon Volkov, who wrote 'Testimony: The Memoirs of Shostakovich' says that the concert was a siege; tickets were impossible to get. Police, mounted and on foot, surrounded the theatre. Mariss Jansons was in the audience there and he recalled, "The Berlin Philharmonic played at 200 per cent. It was an unbelievable occasion." Shostakovich was also in the audience. He was so moved that he joined Karajan and the orchestra on stage after the performance.
The 1981 recording of the symphony came at a special time. In the wake of serious illness in 1976, Karajan returned to music with renewed intensity and Berlin, which he had guided for over a quarter of a century, was at the very peak of its powers. The performance as per Karajan was to some extent to share the idea of a struggle to survive in a world beset by menace. In the Allegro section of the finale, Shostakovich's incredibly quick metronome mark was now taken literally, something few orchestras could contemplate, let alone manage. Already in his 1966 recording, Karajan had shown that he had the measure of this symphony.
In the first movement, he gives an atmosphere described as unremitting and in the finale, the Berliners leave no doubt as to their virtuosity. The Berlin Philharmonic is beyond compare when it attacks the Allegro and the horn solo which introduces the Allegretto is hot. Karajan takes the climaxes more relentlessly than any other conductor. His account has the greatest impact. Karajan once told that he would have liked to be Dmitri Shostakovich had he been a composer."
Impressive, powerful, eerily-played DSCH 10th
John Grabowski | USA | 01/24/2010
(5 out of 5 stars)
"Perhaps no other orchestra/conductor combo could steamroller the listener quite like the BPO and Karajan. When the music called for sheer force, this combo was hard to beat. And this recording may be one of the two best examples of HvK and the BPO in full cry. (Their Mahler 6th recorded in 1976 is the other.) HvK's earlier 1966 performance of this symphony is faster and leaner, but this performance is more menacing and, to my ears, better-paced, especially in the first two movements. Here the opening Moderato is truly taken at that tempo (many conductors go too fast here, and the music loses much if it's "creeping" quality; the same holds true for the first movement of the Shostakovich Fifth), and the results are magnificent. The scherzo is truly hair-raising; while others, such as Haitink (believe it or not) take the movement much faster, the risk is that by playing it fast you lose some of the *weight,* particularly in the bowing of the strings. Even Karajan's 1966 reading, while faster, lacks the menace of this reading--this performance *weighs* more, and something I think some listeners fail to realize is that power is manifest by more than just speed.
Then we come to what I think are the two most problematic movements in the symphony. Karajan gets the third movement right to my ears; hard to describe, it's a quality of absurdness, of grotesque heroism, something twisted, like a Luis Bunuel film set to music. Then comes an even tougher movement, the "brain-dead" finale, as I like to call it. I cannot imagine a political and musical mind like Shostakovich--always probing, always doubting--serving up his happy-dance finale to be taken at face value. Or, if he did regard the death of Stalin as a triumph, it must have been a shallow triumph, for the tra-la-la music does not convince me. The most convincing reading I've ever heard of this movement belongs to Kurt Sanderling, who, unfortunately, is let down in much of the rest of the symphony by an underpowered orchestra. He catches a certain fey quality in the music that is very hard to put into words, however. I'd have to say, though, without going through my *entire* collection of DSCH 10ths, that Karajan comes in a close second. Again it's the weight in the passages of struggle--Karajan keeps this from being an easy and decisive triumph, and I'm left at the end feeling that the struggle could resume as soon as the recording ends. It's a satisfying ending to a work whose ending rarely satisfies me, and it's a tough job for a conductor. Karajan does well.
There are a few minor flubs that mar the recording. At one or two points in the complex first movement, sections are not quite together--barely noticible in most bands, but unusual for the Berlin Philharmonic under the baton of the conductor famed for being a controlmeister. More troublesome, though, is the clarinet solo near the movement's opening. While the tone is apprpriately haunting, one long note is held at half-again its value, a surprising mistake in an orchestra of this caliber. Later in the movement again the clarinet is just not quite as tight as you'd expect. This recording was made in 1982, the year of the controversial appointment of Sabine Meyer, the Philharmonic's first woman. The rest of the orchestra rejected her--players would move their chairs away from her when she would sit down in the woodwind section--and the friction eventually led to Karajan's departure from the orchestra. Perhaps Meyer, who is a superb musician, was just a bit flustered here, assuming this is her. (To my ears it sounds like it is.) Anyway, I'm kind of surprised they didn't fix this in the editing room, especially since the first flaw is so exposed.
These are minor complaints, however. This is a great interpretation. I wouldn't want to also be without Karajan I, Sanderling, Haitink, Mitropoulos and especially the very recently-released dark horse, Frank Shipway with the Royal Philharmonic (forget that he's not a marquee name and the RPO isn't quite a top-flight band sometimes--this is a Shostakovich 10th for the ages; and you should check out their Mahler 5th--even better!), but this belongs in any Shostakovich collection."
Track Listings (4) - Disc #1
