MusicWeb International One of the most grown-up review sites around 2023
Approaching 60,000 reviews
and more.. and still writing ...

Search MusicWeb Here Acte Prealable Polish CDs
 

Presto Music CD retailer
 
Founder: Len Mullenger                                    Editor in Chief:John Quinn             


REVIEW

Some items
to consider

new MWI
Current reviews

old MWI
pre-2023 reviews

paid for
advertisements

Acte Prealable Polish recordings

Forgotten Recordings
Forgotten Recordings
All Forgotten Records Reviews

TROUBADISC
Troubadisc Weinberg- TROCD01450

All Troubadisc reviews


FOGHORN Classics

Alexandra-Quartet
Brahms String Quartets

All Foghorn Reviews


All HDTT reviews


Songs to Harp from
the Old and New World


all Nimbus reviews



all tudor reviews


Follow us on Twitter


Editorial Board
MusicWeb International
Founding Editor
   
Rob Barnett
Editor in Chief
John Quinn
Contributing Editor
Ralph Moore
Webmaster
   David Barker
Postmaster
Jonathan Woolf
MusicWeb Founder
   Len Mullenger

alternatively
CD: AmazonUK AmazonUS
Download: Classicsonline


Dmitry SHOSTAKOVICH (1906-1975)
Podrugi (The Girlfriends) - Complete Film Music Op. 41 (ii) (reconstructed by Mark Fitz-Gerald) (1936) [46:33]
Rule, Britannia! Op. 28 (1931) [8:45]
Salute to Spain Op. 44 (1936) [10:52]
Symphonic Movement (unfinished) (1945) [6:42]
Celia Sheen (theremin) (The Girlfriends); Kamil Barczewski (bass) (Salute to Spain); Camerata Silesia (Anna Szostak, director)
Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra/Mark Fitz-Gerald
rec. Gregorz Fitelberg Concert Hall, Katowice, August-October 2008, January 2009. DDD
Notes by John Riley, Mark Fitz-Gerald, David Fanning, Olga Digonskaya
NAXOS 8.572138 [72:53] 
Experience Classicsonline


If one puts together all the operas, film scores, ballets and sets of incidental music that Shostakovich wrote, one would find that his “dramatic” music comprises more than a third of his entire output. Given the conditions under which he worked, such pieces would show a greater variety in quality than in the output of someone living in a non-totalitarian state. This is exactly what we find on this record: music written to serve political purposes that sometimes can’t help being good.
 

On this disk we have two sets of incidental music and one film score, as well as a historical curiosity. Around 1931 the composer was working for a theatrical group known as TRAM which was engaged in a production called Rule, Britannia! The plot is very similar to that of the ballet The Age of Gold. Here, a Western engineer - engineers were big in Russia at that time - joins the Communist cause against a background of the struggle between communism and fascism. The score to the original production is lost and we only have the music for four numbers, with the “Protest” movement reconstructed by Mark Fitz-Gerald. While I would not insult the music by calling it “agitprop” one definitely gets the idea that the composer was not enjoying himself while writing it. Only the aforementioned “Protest” movement, which reminds one of some of Shostakovich’s earlier film music, evinces genuine feeling. 

In spite of a title that sounds like a 1930s Hollywood musical, Salute to Spain is altogether more substantial than Rule, Britannia! It was one of his first efforts to reingratiate himself with the Party after the Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk debacle of 1936. It incorporates genuine historical characters of the Spanish Civil War and follows the adventures of three Spanish sisters who perish fighting the Fascists - see the end-result of The Girlfriends. While much of the material consists of fanfares, marches and revolutionary songs (well-set), the music for the Song of Rosita is genuinely moving as is its reminiscence just before the final music, which is an equally affecting Funeral March for her sister Lucia. These sections are music of genuine quality. 

The Girlfriends is an epic tale about three friends, Asya, Zoya and Natasha, who grow up under Tsarism and their later adventures as nurses in the Russian Civil War. In the first part they really are girls and Shostakovich has some effective music as familial situations yield to a great strike at the rubber plant at which the girls’ parents are employed. After the near death of Asya’s mother the girls try to earn money by singing at an inn. This produces the most interesting section, musically, of Part 1 - the character Sylich’s description of the death of his son aboard the battleship Potemkin. After this affecting tale, a riot breaks out and the girls just escape the arrival of the militia. Part 2 takes place in 1919 and is heralded by an amazing fanfare for brass and organ. The girls have become nurses for the Red Army and are almost captured when the town of Pushkin falls to the Whites. They are rescued by Sylich on a train and during their flight we have the most surprising musical episode of the film: a series of bizarre variants of the Internationale played on the theremin. There are further escapes for the three, but at the end Asya is killed and the film ends with a very moving elegy. Of the twenty-three tracks almost every one is scored for a different small group of instruments from the one preceding it, although several incorporate string quartet and piano - a reminder that the composer was working on his first piano concerto at this time. But the score is not at all fragmentary and the drama is maintained. 

When I received this disc the item that most interested me was the unfinished Symphonic Movement. As is well-known the authorities in Russia expected that Shostakovich would complete his war-time trilogy, started with the Seventh and Eighth symphonies, with a work that would both be a fit paean to the end of WWII and a worthy Symphony No. 9 in itself.  Several of his students had indicated that the composer started such a piece, but Shostakovich instead produced the Symphony No. 9 that we know, which while estimable, is neither a patriotic epic nor a companion to the Beethoven 9th. The Shostakovich scholar Olga Digonskaya, after years of searching, was able to locate the opening of the original Symphony No. 9. This work has some of the same dissonance found in Symphony No. 8. There is an unrelenting main theme and an interesting second subject. However, I found that the work proceeded on motor energy more than actual conviction. Perhaps the composer felt something similar: no matter how happy he might feel at the end of the conflict, it was not really his style to say so musically. Or perhaps he just wished to avoid “presumptuous”, as he put it, comparisons with the great Ninth of Beethoven. In any event, something of a disappointment. 

The somewhat cavernous sound of the Grzegorz Fitelberg hall actually adds to the overall feel of the film score, lending a certain authenticity. Celia Sheen is good as always in her strange variation on the Internationale - a far cry from Midsomer Murders. Equally good is Kamil Baczewski in his excerpts from Salute to Spain - he sings this music very movingly. The orchestra does well in following their conductor through a wide variety of emotional territory, both as a complete entity and in the various subgroups used in The Girlfriends. I felt that after putting together this large score, Fitz-Gerald could have put more energy into conducting it. His reading is good, but could reveal more of the excitement that is in the music. His conducting of the other works is exceptional. In producing this disk, Fitz-gerald has shown us new sides of Shostakovich’s endeavor in three fields: symphonic, cinematic and theatrical and for this and his disc of the score to Odna, we owe him a debt of thanks.

William Kreindler


 

 


Advertising on
Musicweb


Donate and keep us afloat

 

New Releases

Naxos Classical
All Naxos reviews

Hyperion recordings
All Hyperion reviews

Foghorn recordings
All Foghorn reviews

Troubadisc recordings
All Troubadisc reviews



all Bridge reviews


all cpo reviews

Divine Art recordings
Click to see New Releases
Get 10% off using code musicweb10
All Divine Art reviews


All Eloquence reviews

Lyrita recordings
All Lyrita Reviews

 

Wyastone New Releases
Obtain 10% discount

Subscribe to our free weekly review listing

 

 


EXPLORE MUSICWEB INTERNATIONAL

Making a Donation to MusicWeb

Writing CD reviews for MWI

About MWI
Who we are, where we have come from and how we do it.

Site Map

How to find a review

How to find articles on MusicWeb
Listed in date order

Review Indexes
   By Label
      Select a label and all reviews are listed in Catalogue order
   By Masterwork
            Links from composer names (eg Sibelius) are to resource pages with links to the review indexes for the individual works as well as other resources.

Themed Review pages

Jazz reviews

 

Discographies
   Composer
      Composer surveys
   National
      Unique to MusicWeb -
a comprehensive listing of all LP and CD recordings of given works
.
Prepared by Michael Herman

The Collector’s Guide to Gramophone Company Record Labels 1898 - 1925
Howard Friedman

Book Reviews

Complete Books
We have a number of out of print complete books on-line

Interviews
With Composers, Conductors, Singers, Instumentalists and others
Includes those on the Seen and Heard site

Nostalgia

Nostalgia CD reviews

Records Of The Year
Each reviewer is given the opportunity to select the best of the releases

Monthly Best Buys
Recordings of the Month and Bargains of the Month

Comment
Arthur Butterworth Writes

An occasional column

Phil Scowcroft's Garlands
British Light Music articles

Classical blogs
A listing of Classical Music Blogs external to MusicWeb International

Reviewers Logs
What they have been listening to for pleasure

Announcements

 

Community
Bulletin Board

Give your opinions or seek answers

Reviewers
Past and present

Helpers invited!

Resources
How Did I Miss That?

Currently suspended but there are a lot there with sound clips


Composer Resources

British Composers

British Light Music Composers

Other composers

Film Music (Archive)
Film Music on the Web (Closed in December 2006)

Programme Notes
For concert organizers

External sites
British Music Society
The BBC Proms
Orchestra Sites
Recording Companies & Retailers
Online Music
Agents & Marketing
Publishers
Other links
Newsgroups
Web News sites etc

PotPourri
A pot-pourri of articles

MW Listening Room
MW Office

Advice to Windows Vista users  
Questionnaire    
Site History  
What they say about us
What we say about us!
Where to get help on the Internet
CD orders By Special Request
Graphics archive
Currency Converter
Dictionary
Magazines
Newsfeed  
Web Ring
Translation Service

Rules for potential reviewers :-)
Do Not Go Here!
April Fools




Return to Review Index

Untitled Document


Reviews from previous months
Join the mailing list and receive a hyperlinked weekly update on the discs reviewed. details
We welcome feedback on our reviews. Please use the Bulletin Board
Please paste in the first line of your comments the URL of the review to which you refer.