Comparison recordings
Symphony #5, Karel Ancerl, CPO [ADD]
Supraphon 11 1951-2 011
Symphony #5, Artur Rodzinski, Cleveland
SO [mono ADD] LYS 139
Symphony #5, Artur Rodzinski, RPO [mono
ADD] Westminster MCAD2-9823B
Symphony #5, Stokowski, NYPO Everest
[AAD] EVC 9030
Symphony #9, Järvi, SNO Chandos
CHAN 8587
The Shostakovich Symphony
#5 is one of the handful of classical
works I came to know from listening
to 78 rpm records, a challenge to the
imagination residing in having to stitch
together the three minute segments into
continuous musical phrases and movements,
and an even greater challenge in trying
to figure out just what a real symphony
orchestra sounded like since I had at
that time never heard one. (We were
tough in the old days, we didn’t
have it easy like you kids do now!)
I still remember where the side breaks
were, and when I listen now, I feel
them as they go by. It was the Rodzinski
performance with the Cleveland Orchestra
which I learned from 78s; this performance
has been continuously, and still is,
in print and still in some ways the
best version ever done, although people
have told me that since this performance
is probably part of my genetic code
now I am unlikely to be able to give
any other a fair hearing. Well, I don’t
know. I’ve heard lots of good performances
and recordings of this symphony and
I think I judge them fairly. I’ve given
away more recordings than I own — Bernstein,
Berglund, Rostropovich, Maxim Shostakovich,
and so on.
It was with considerable
favourable anticipation that I approached
listening to Gergiev’s recording since
I have been generally very pleased with
his work. But I wasn’t prepared for
what I heard. I’ve been listening to,
and loving, this music for 50 years
and I have never, never, heard it so
beautifully played and certainly never
so beautifully recorded. My tears started
flowing about three minutes in and never
did stop. The ghost of Leopold Stokowski
was sitting next to me and at several
points he leaned over and whispered,
"Did you hear that? I wish I’d
thought of that. Why didn’t I think
of that?" Stokowski’s recording
on 78s was one of those marred by fade-outs
and fade-ins at the side breaks, but,
no matter, his stereo remake in 1959
was in every way equal or better than
his original.
One of the reasons
the Rodzinski recording was so successful
is that, like most Western conductors
of the time, he paid scant attention
to the metronome markings in the score,
which are much too slow. The Russian
recordings of that period unfortunately
did follow them, but Gergiev does not
make that mistake. However if I were
forced at gunpoint to name a flaw in
this Gergiev recording, I would say
that while most of the time he’s right
on, there are a few places where I wish
he would pick up the tempo just a little.
Among the many things
that Shostakovich thought in January
of 1936 after he read the devastating
attack on him in Pravda might
have been, "I’m good, and I’m going
to show them how good I am. And I’m
going to show them what I think of them
at the same time and make them like
it." He withdrew the Fourth
Symphony from rehearsals and commenced
work on the Fifth Symphony. At
the premier in 1937 reports indicate
that Shostakovich’s truly musically
aware friends were stunned speechless
by what they heard.
If Shostakovich’s orchestration
teacher had been present that night
(he wasn’t, he was dead) he would have
wept for joy. If I were ever to teach
an orchestration class I would spend
at least three class periods on this
score, it’s that interesting. The use
of the piano at rehearsal #17 in the
first movement is masterful. The interplay
of harp and flute at #60 in the scherzo
is pure genius. Listen to that use of
xylophone to accent the string melody
at #89 of the slow movement! Even if
he did steal the idea for the final
chords from Schumann, it sounds entirely
new here. Not until the Seventh symphony
did he experiment so much or so successfully
with orchestral sonorities.
The recording is also
a marvel. The melodic line in the low
strings at the beginning of the first
movement is wonderfully clear. The ff
violin notes in the first movement just
before #5 very often overload in ordinary
recordings, but not here. The snare
drum accents at #121 are usually placed
very forward, but in this SACD recording
they can be subtle and soft and still
be clearly audible. Many other details
that are usually blurred are here very
apparent as the surround sound recording
establishes a sense "air"
around the instruments. However, this
recording is not excessively transparent,
for many of Shostakovich’s effects depend
on a blending of the orchestral sound.
Previously this would not be possible,
to have a blending and clarity at the
same time. It was usually necessary
to exaggerate the separation of the
instruments so they would be distinct
in the final mix.
With the Ninth Symphony
my first favourite recording was a hi-fi
Urania LP but the Järvi recording
on Chandos set the standard some years
ago for both sound and performance and
easily eclipsed all memory of that LP
version. In this work the trick is to
get a wailing cantorial quality in the
bassoon solo in the slow movement but
also keep all the sprightly jumping
around from getting too silly. I was
very interested to see how the Järvi
version held up in comparison with this
new one.
Again, the Gergiev
is clearly the finest performance of
the work I’ve ever heard. I have never
respected the work so much; in his hands
it seems to mean much more than it ever
did before. Gergiev brings his trained
instincts of an experienced opera conductor
to the service of his acute musical
intelligence to bring us a performance
of overwhelming intensity. He achieves
a Mozartean earnestness in the sprightly
string passages, but with more of an
Italian flavour. The whispers of tragedy
in the dramatic sections are exquisitely
balanced against the mad tarantella-like
frenzy of the windup. In the cruellest
of comparisons, I played the Järvi
CD immediately after on exactly the
same equipment with identical settings.
Of course even so fine a sound as a
Chandos CD cannot compare with an SACD;
the screechy strings, blary brass, crashy
percussion and opaque perspective inherent
in the CD format are most unfortunately
evident. Fine as his version, Järvi
cannot equal the intensity of concentration
of Gergiev. By comparison, and only
by direct comparison, Järvi sounds
like he’s rushing through it, even though
his overall timing is only 1% faster,
and Gergiev is actually faster in the
fourth and fifth movements. Both orchestras
play impeccably, of course, with equal
skill and polish.
Next, I played the
CD tracks on this hybrid SACD to compare
with the Chandos CD. The Gergiev recording
is still a great recording, incrementally
smoother than the Järvi; but as
the percussion accents are not artificially
brought forward, they tend to disappear,
requiring that the treble control be
advanced. The bass strings become somewhat
muddled and pitch is less determinate.
Dynamic range of the two recordings
is now equal.
With this disk capping
his previous achievements, Gergiev shows
himself to be a supremely great conductor,
at the level of Stokowski, Furtwängler,
and Karajan. If the Nineteenth and Twentieth
centuries were the times of the greatest
Russian composers, it may be that with
Gergiev, Polyansky, and Yablonsky, the
Twenty-first century will be that of
the greatest Russian conductors.
Paul Shoemaker
Kirov Orchestra/Valery Gergiev 
PHILIPS
470 651-2 [73.53] 