It’s a curious love-affair
that the Russians have with Shakespeare,
when you consider that his art lies
in the poetry of his language. No matter
how well staged - or spectacularly filmed
- after a Shakespeare performance what
stays most firmly in the memory is the
resonance of Shakespeare’s peerless
words. In spite of my surname, I’m a
Yorkshireman born and bred. Not speaking
a word of Russian, apart from ‘da’ and
‘niet’, I find myself mercilessly harassed
by a particular question. No, not ‘To
be, or not to be’, but something rather
more mundane: what is it like to speak
and think only in Russian, and read
or go to see a Shakespeare play translated
into that tongue, so far removed in
sight and sound even from modern English,
let alone the mother tongue known to
Shakespeare?
It’s a tough one to
answer: the native English-speakers
among us can’t even find out by learning
Russian - because to find the real answer
we’d have to ‘un-learn’ our native tongues.
Ah, but then we’d still not be able
to compare the two experiences, would
we? At this point, you may select an
appropriate expletive, then delete it.
The nearest we can get is to observe,
rather lamely, that a sizeable slice
of Shakespeare’s supreme poetry must
survive translation. Otherwise great
musical dramatists like Shostakovich
would never have been so transfixed
by it.
Fortunately for all
concerned, music doesn’t have such monumental
barriers. The great Shakespeare-inspired
music has pretty much the same impact
whatever language you do your thinking
in. According to John Riley’s nicely-organised
and informative booklet note, in spite
of being bewitched by the Bard Shostakovich
wrote very little music as a direct
consequence - a setting of Sonnet
66 and music for King Lear
and Hamlet. In passing, I suspect
he made up for it by producing rather
a lot as an indirect consequence. Riley
points out that Shostakovich first wrote
music for a production of Hamlet
as far back as 1932, at the fag-end
of the heady days of Soviet artistic
freedom. This disastrous production
apparently attempted to re-interpret
the scenario as an outrageous farce.
Teasingly, Riley omits to mention whether
any of that youthful score wormed its
way into the film score of 1964, for
in this we do indeed find moments where
the music teeters towards, or falls
headlong into, the comical.
We also find a score
brimming with Shostakovich’s current
characteristics of style. Anyone familiar
with the Thirteenth Symphony,
or even more pointedly the closely contemporaneous
cantata The Execution of Stepan Razin,
will immediately recognise his technique
of rendering a theme as a series of
vicious sledgehammer blows. There are
also clear reminders of the Sixth
and Eleventh Symphonies in another
Shostakovich ‘special sound’, a worrisome
whirring effect generated through a
sustained legato string trill. Yet I
also became aware, as I listened to
music largely unfamiliar to me, of another
‘strand’ threading through the movements.
More than once I found myself taken
back to the Twelfth Symphony’s
ominous second movement, in which Shostakovich
reputedly observes Lenin’s hatching
of his master-plan. Now, there’s
something to ponder upon!
Hamlet is music
for a film. The point of that perspicacious
profundity is that the score suffers
all the usual shortcomings of film music.
On this CD, the ‘First Complete Recording
of the Complete Film Score’, we are
spared none of the inevitable snippets
of sound - two tracks each last a minuscule
fourteen seconds, of which the music
spans only eleven. Often, endings are
less than wholly edifying, presumably
because the composer knew that the particular
passages were destined to be faded -
or drowned - out. Then again, there
are passages required to underpin dialogue.
Because these are designed to amplify
mood without getting in the way of the
words, very little is happening musically.
Not least, even some of the more substantial
passages, because they were designed
to serve the drama, can’t hope to approach
the kind of symphonic logic that can
melt your brain.
That’s the down-side.
Now for the up-side. The music is presented
in chronological sequence and hence,
by way of compensation for the loss
of symphonic logic, retains quite a
lot of the inherited dramatic logic.
By happy coincidence, the more minuscule
sound-bites (we might call them ‘sound-nibbles’)
tend to line themselves up as aphoristic
preludes to, or bridges between, longer
items. In addition, some sequences of
items cluster into ‘pseudo-movements’.
One example is the opening four tracks
- Overture, Military Music,
Fanfares, and The Palace Ball.
Another obvious one is what we can call
the ‘Ophelia sequence’: tracks 18 to
21 chart her decline, madness, death
and interment.
Riley points out that
there is more of the Ball (track
6) on the CD than we hear in the film.
Shostakovich seems to have ‘over-produced’
to allow for such fades, and hence failed
to resist the temptation to write some
sort of ‘ending’. Even where, to underpin
a monologue, simple ‘mood noise’ is
all that is called for, Shostakovich
nevertheless maintains some slender
thread of musical argument. When you
think about it, this is second nature
to him, being in fact a common expressive
device in his concert music. Finally,
there are several places where the film
scenario allows the music its head.
When we hear the music divorced from
its proper context, these ‘set pieces’
form architectural ‘piles’ providing
that vital measure of cohesion.
Taken with the composer’s
enviable flair for orchestral sonority
and supreme sensitivity to the drama
it is meant to support, the upshot is
a film score that comes nearer than
most to providing a satisfactory experience
purely as music - and, let’s not forget,
that’s more than an hour of music.
Somebody is probably going to shoot
me for saying that. I don’t care, it’s
true. Most complete film scores,
and I’ve sat through quite a few, can’t
hold a candle to this one when it comes
to standing on their own hind legs.
Feeling something like a series of well-developed
sketches for some unrealised symphonic
edifice, Shostakovich’s Hamlet
is a very rare bird indeed. Mind you,
it seems that I’m in good company: Riley
implies that the composer himself toyed
with the idea of creating a fully-fledged
symphonic poem.
It’d be a bit of a
beggar, wouldn’t it, if you’d read this
far only to find me saying that the
recording or performance didn’t do justice
to the music! Well, not even I would
be that cruel. You can safely go out
and buy this - in fact, at Naxos’s price,
should you feel the urge you can safely
go forth and multi-buy. For a start,
Yablonsky is firing on all cylinders,
drawing oodles of atmosphere out of
his mustard-keen Russian players. If
he’s missed a trick, then I don’t
think you’ll miss it either!
You can feel a pent-up charge right
from the outset, where the straining
but mellow theme on unison strings and
horns is bruised by savagely percussive
interjections. The ensuing Military
Music, with a beautifully judged
rasping tuba, and the brief but brilliantly
executed Fanfares combine to
create a graduated bridge to The
Palace Ball. This is a satisfyingly
complete scherzo-like movement in which
Shostakovich nods very firmly in the
direction of Prokofiev, although its
dizzy skittering and brassy ‘chase music’
do tend to set it apart from your average
palatial knees-up (which, of course,
is entirely the point). As just about
the jolliest part of the entire score,
Yablonsky rightly demands - and gets
- maximum fizz from the orchestra.
In fact, Yablonsky
demands - and gets - maximum ‘just about
everything’. At one extreme, Shostakovich
could throw up the most appalling walls
of noise - and that’s meant as a compliment,
because when others try the same trick,
more often than not all we get is appalling
noise. To get my drift, you only have
to hear the almost effortless ease with
which the orchestra brays out the massive
music of the insubstantial ghost of
Hamlet’s dear departed Dad (track 7)
or feel the sheer inevitability they
bring to the resurgence of these same
phrases at the moment Hamlet is struck
down (track 23). It’s at moments like
these that you could be excused for
wetting yourself - so, be warned! At
the start of this paragraph I said ‘just
about’, and sadly there is one
place where this aspect of the score
isn’t brought off successfully. Right
at the very end Hamlet’s Funeral,
which surely ought to be a colossal
indictment of tragic failure, is just
too brisk to be appalling.
At the other extreme,
there are those minimal ‘slender threads’
of quiet ‘mood music’ that were never
intended to hold our undivided attention.
These are the real test of the performers.
From our present-day perspective The
Story of Horatio and the Ghost (track
3) sounds a bit like ‘Frankenstein’s
Monster Stalks Palace Square’, but it’s
a musical cliché only in respect
of the obvious eerie string tremolandi.
Once you’ve got over them, the combination
of glutinous tuba and the sinister footsteps
of piano and harp, punctuated by the
bell-chimes of a celesta, lead us up
a path to a different garden altogether.
The same is true of The Ghost:
After the ‘Hammy Horror’ tumult has
abated, a timp pulses under tolling
piano, hollow horns, flute discords,
and cross-rhythmic snare-drum, then
crawling strings and tuba (ghosts, perhaps,
from the third movement of the Twelfth
Symphony?). In such passages there’s
not much ‘music’, but there is
plenty of musical texture, pulse and
dynamic, which Yablonsky, supported
by keenly responsive playing, ‘stage-manages’
to hypnotic effect. By hypnosis does
he hold our attention, or at least suspend
our tendency to inattention.
Coming somewhere between
these extremes are other dramatic episodes
of which the Poisoning Scene
(track 16) has to be the plum. In this,
elements of the two extremes are combined
with music more aligned with ‘knockabout’
pieces like The Ball (track 6)
or especially Arrival of the Players
(track 10) - this latter being, in all
but name, a boisterous Russian dance
with which the orchestra has a whale
of a time. However, Yablonsky is well
aware that in the Poisoning Scene
the ‘knockabout’ music is more than
just ‘Keystone Kops’, and brings out
the sinister undertones that make it
reminiscent of ‘Revolutionary Petrograd’.
The most breathtakingly
original writing in the score comes
in the music for Ophelia. Shostakovich’s
inspired choice of the brittle, fragile
sound of the harpsichord is topped only
by the way he deploys the instrument.
It first appears in Hamlet’s Parting
from Ophelia (track 8). Strings
play the ‘Hamlet’ theme, a firmly diatonic,
stately ‘baroque’ variation sounding
as pure as the driven snow. The harpsichord
responds with music that is by contrast
harmonically unstable. Later, in the
Descent into Madness, strings
again set the scene, alternating rhythmically
repeated notes with butterfly flutterings,
compounding the established sense of
instability. The harpsichord enters
sounding for all the world like the
Aubade for mandolins that fails
to awaken the ‘dead’ Juliet in Act 3
of Prokofiev’s ballet, only here slowed-down,
stilted and unsteady. Before the section
ends, it is reduced to aimless drifting
in even beats. In the ensuing Ophelia’s
insanity, the terminal state is
confirmed by setting the meandering
harpsichord against richly sonorous
string phrases. Finally, in the Death
of Ophelia, Hamlet’s ‘stately’ variation
becomes a lament on solo violin against
which the harpsichord completes its
doleful disintegration.
Prior to this CD, you
could hear this astounding sequence
of music only be seeing the film: it
is represented only by that final item
in the Hamlet Suite Op 116a,
prepared by Lev Atovmian and identified
within this recording. Regardless of
the standard of performance and quality
of recording, that alone makes this
an essential purchase for Shostakovich
fans, followers of film music, and anyone
with even half a heart. Maybe one day
somebody will do it better, but until
that day Yablonsky and the Russian Philharmonic
give every impression of playing this
with consummate sympathy and understanding.
As it happens, the
harpsichord is also at the centre of
my comments on the recording. Sample
any few seconds at random, and you get
the impression of full, warm, and detailed
sound in a pleasing ambience. Extend
your sample length and you start to
notice a few oddities. The ambience
varies. Perspectives seem to shift:
certain instruments - notably the brass
- are now close up, and then set back.
The harpsichord especially seems to
be in its own isolated environment,
insulated from the rest of the orchestra.
In, for example, Hamlet’s Monologue
I can clearly hear the horn-players’
intakes of breath, but in other places
I can’t. The term ‘Decca Phase 4’ springs
to mind.
However, this is not
necessarily a bad thing, given the context
of the score. Microphonic manipulation,
provided you don’t get too close to
the living, breathing musicians,
is an entirely legitimate device in
film - recall Prokofiev’s excitement
at the possibilities this offered him
when writing Alexander Nevsky!
I don’t know, and the booklet doesn’t
enlighten me as to what extent Shostakovich
drew on such techniques in this score,
but if he did so then that would explain
it. Not that I care much: even with
the jiggery-pokery, the sound is eminently
ear-worthy, and anyway the encapsulation
of the harpsichord actually reinforces
the music’s import.
Prospective purchasers
should note that this disc is also available
in SACD format. SACD is demonstrably
of superior quality to CD. However,
this does not automatically eliminate
the quirks I have mentioned, as these
are matters of microphony. The higher
quality could even work against it,
by clarifying the quirks, much as CD
remastering exposed the flaws in, as
well as the finer points of, analogue
originals. I’m not saying that it will,
merely that it might. Until I
have a rush of blood and invest in a
SACD player, I won’t be in a position
to judge.
Of course, no matter
how good the recording, if the playing’s
duff then so is the CD. My only carp
about the actual instrumental sound
is that the tam-tam sounds a bit thin
and damp. That apart, the playing throughout
is thrilling and brimming with character.
Ensemble, notably the ‘blend’ of the
strings, is not always drilled with
military precision, largely because
it comes a definite second place to
playing the music with real, red-blooded
feeling and at white-heat. It’s Hobson’s
Choice, then, but not at all a bad one
with which to be stuck.
Paul Serotsky
See also review
by Colin Clarke
Russian Philharmonic Orchestra/Dmitri Yablonsky