Search - Dmitry Shostakovich, Andre Previn, London Symphony Orchestra :: Shostakovich: Symphony No. 8

The Best Shostakovich 8th Ever Recorded

Dmitri | Florida - Paradise | 11/18/2008

(5 out of 5 stars)

"My handle is Dmitri as in Dmitri Shostakovich. I have over 1,000 Shostakovich CDs alone. This is my first Amazon buyer review for a Shostakovich work.



The 8th symphony: Composed in 1943 at the height of World War 2 with the Russians fighting the Nazis (Yes the Russians were our allies!). The symphony depicts emotionally and literally that war in music. In the scherzos you can actually depict shelling, and visualize troop movement and tanks. The other movements are about feelings. The first movement for the lack of a better term is war...right in the middle of conflict emotionally. The last movement is resignation. An anticlimatic symphony in the end, but like perhaps no other piece of music a lesson in history. Rostropovich the famous cellist and friend of Shostakovich called it his masterpiece.



The performance: Previn maximizes the drama in the outer movements. Many conductors can do this with various success: Mravinsky, Haitink,and Jarvi. But only Previn takes the scherzos to the most maddening, rip snorting, fast paces. This is what distinguishes this performance and sets it apart from others. For people with a stop watch and the ability to look at the timings of the 2nd and 3rd movements see just how many get faster than under 6 minutes. Only three to my recollection: Haitink, Jarvi, and Previn. Of these Previn is the most riveting. I bought this at full price. It is indeed now a bargain on the EMI Encore label.

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Previn's Shostakovich at its best -- a shatering 8th in eve

Santa Fe Listener | Santa Fe, NM USA | 03/09/2008

(5 out of 5 stars)

"I like David Bryson's description of the unrelenting grimness of the Shostakovich 8th so much that it's worth quoting a sample: The symphony "rouses itself from the anguish of the first movement to bitterness and a touch of defiance in the next two, sinks back into a near-catatonic stillness in the fourth and attains some kind of resigned peace in the final section." Of all the readings I've heard, Previn's first one from 1973 (he later redid the work for DG with the same LSO) was the premiere recording of the Eighth in stereo and is probably the most mournful. It's notably slow in the first and last movement -- the remake is slower still by a minute in each case -- but there's no rhetoric. ONe feels that the conductor is fully in sympathy with the composer's tragic lament.



Generally one would reflexively bypass Previn for the genuine Russian article in this music, but as it happens, Gergiev's 8th on Philips is unexpectedly weak, and Rostropovich's live account with the LSO on the orchestra's house label is coarse and decidedly rhetorical. So Previn emerges as one of the best recordings. I haven't compared his two versions side by side, but this earlier one is vividly recorded and blunt in its emotional impact - it feels rawer and more strident, which is good. The playing of the LSO is committed and intense. Perhaps the biting inner movements could be more corrosive, but that's a small quibble. In the end, no one will equal Mravinsky's shattering accounts on Philips and especially BBC Legends, but Previn throws us into the searing cauldron, and nothing more can be asked.



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Previn's First Shostakovich Eighth...Finally!

Moldyoldie | Motown, USA | 03/25/2008

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This was the recording (on LP) which introduced me to this most powerful of twentieth century symphonies; I've been intrigued and enamored of the Shostakovich Eighth ever since and have collected multiple recordings. Now, it's finally available again on CD (used copies of previous CD incarnations were astronomically priced) in EMI's budget-priced Encore series and sounds fantastic! It hasn't dimmed one iota in its persuasiveness and impact.



The recording dates from 1973 and I believe was the first stereo recording of the Shostakovich Eighth available commercially in the West."