Russian Romances
Dmitri SHOSTAKOVICH (1906-1975)
From Jewish Folk Poetry Op.791 (1948) [23:03]
Suite on verses by Michelangelo Buonarroti Op.145a2 (1975) [37:30]
3 Romances on Poems by Alexander Pushkin Op.46a3 (1936) [6:19]
6 Poems by Marina Tsvetayeva Op.143a4 (1973) [18:39]
6 Romances on verses by English Poets Op.62/1405 (1971) [14:50]
6 Romances on words by Japanese Poets Op.216 (1932) [13:19]
Nina Fomina1 (soprano); Tamara Sinjawskaja1,4 (mezzo);
Arcadi Mischenkin1 (tenor); Vladimir Kasatschuk6 (tenor);
Anatoli Kotscherga2 (bass); Anatoli Babykin3 (bass);
Stanislav Sulejmanow5 (bass)
Cologne Radio Symphony Orchestra/Michail Jurowski
rec. Studio Stalberger WDR Cologne Germany 17-19 June 1994, 3,4,5 Philharmonie
Cologne, Germany 22-27 May 1995, 1,6 21-23 February 1996, 2
CAPRICCIO C5095 [60:33 + 53:07] 
There is a compelling argument that identifies three strands of Shostakovich's
compositions as being his most personal and revelatory. Two of these "panels"
of works are well known and long acknowledged. The public face of the fifteen
symphonies crosses an enormous emotional range from the casual brilliance
of the student first to the death-haunted landscape of the oblique fifteenth.
Then there are the remarkable fifteen string quartets perceived as the private
face and the medium of choice when he needed to exorcise the demons he was
pursued by for most of mature creative life. That leaves the third part of
this triptych - the song-cycles. Depending on how you categorise these there
are at least six major orchestrated cycles that - as with the symphonies -
span the bulk of Shostakovich's life. Oddly, given that each of these works
contains music of extraordinary power and emotion they have never held any
kind of grip on the recorded catalogue let alone the concert hall. That is
evidenced by the fact that this re-release from Capriccio of a two disc set
of the main six orchestrated cycles seems to be the only example in the current
catalogue. The same works (plus the two Krilov Fables Op.4) were recorded
for DG by Neeme Järvi and the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra at around
the same time as this set - 1994 - but using a more obviously 'stellar' group
of singers including Sergei Leiferkus, Luba Organosova and Nathalie Stutzmann
amongst others. Those two discs seem to be currently available as part of
a 5-disc collection released nominally by Decca (475 7441) but at a price.
The Suite and the Op.62/140 were coupled on a Chandos
disc which I have not heard. It should not be assumed for one second that
the presence of international names means that the DG/Decca version is automatically
preferable regardless of price. Coming back to Järvi's Shostakovich discs
in Gothenburg for DG they do strike one as lacking the red-blooded conviction
that so marked out his incomplete Chandos Shostakovich symphony cycle. The
playing is superb and indeed much of the singing is of extraordinary poise
and beauty but on a like-for-like comparison I have found myself consistently
more engaged by this Capriccio set. Conductor Michail Jurowski carved out
a little niche for himself on this label conducting unusual film scores or
opera suites and cantatas using regional German radio orchestras but this
never translated into core repertoire. Conversely he has become something
of a house conductor for CPO but in a diverse range of repertoire from Suppé
to a Rangström symphony that is superb. I do not intend to do a like-for-like
comparison - suffice to say Järvi is very fine and the singing is excellent
however for music-making of a higher level of sustained inspiration I would
turn to this current set.
Much is made of Shostakovich's choice of text. He was an extraordinarily well-read
man and likewise was fully aware of the resonances and implications of specific
texts. Hidden motifs and the 'meaning' of musical references are easy to deny
or indeed ignore however a text is a text. Take for example the simply stunning
From Jewish Folk poetry Op.79. As with many of these cycles it was
originally conceived for piano accompaniment. Shostakovich's choice of superficially
naive Jewish folk poems was no accident - how could it be? Context is everything
- in the aftermath of World War II Stalin contrived the 'Doctor's Plot' which
was presented as a scheme by the intelligentsia to undermine the revolution.
By extension this group were further identified as being Jewish. At the same
time Shostakovich was subjected to the infamous Zhdanov degree of 1948. At
no time - except in the aftermath of the 'muddle instead of music' debacle
following Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk - was the composer, and his family's
life at greater risk. What does he do? He writes a song-cycle clearly and
directly empathising with the plight of the Jews in the Soviet Union. You
can choose to interpret this as either madness or extraordinary moral bravery.
There was no expectation of these works being publicly performed - the premiere
was a private performance given by Sviatoslav Richter and his wife soprano
Nina Dorliak (plus two other singers) on the composer's forty-second birthday
on 25 September 1948. Curiously, Shostakovich wrote the first eight (pessimistic)
songs for this premiere but then added a further three by late October which
extol the virtues of collective farming! This work was so obviously subversive
that it could not be performed publicly during Stalin's lifetime and the orchestrated
version presented here was not made until the early 1960s. None of this political
point-making would matter as much were the music not as great as it is. Shostakovich
deploys three soloists across the eleven songs and they range from the superficially
simplistic [No.2 Fussy Mummy and Auntie] to miniature scenas of great
power [No.6 The deserted father]. The latter is extremely powerful
- a dialogue between a father and his daughter. Tenor Arkadi Mischenkin is
quite brilliant as the father and his repeated tormented cries of "Tsirele,
my daughter" are hauntingly heart-broken. Indeed here and throughout
the entire set the standard of singing from this group of Russian singers
is extremely high. Mischenkin sings the following song - No.7 A song of
poverty and this encapsulates Shostakovich's genius at its twisted best.
The verse might read "... a spider there [is] spinning trouble, He's
sucking out all my joy leaving me just poverty" but Shostakovich sets
it like some giddy patter song accompanied by a manic 'fiddler on the roof'
accompaniment. This embodies his delight in writing music directly contrary
to the emotional thrust of the text or overall context. For the listener it
can be an unnerving experience but one that produces powerful juxtapositions
between the message of the word and the implied message of the music. The
final 'pessimistic' song No.8 Winter - is another superb evocation
again deploying all three soloists. Another aspect of this performance is
made clear - just how well the Cologne Radio Symphony Orchestra play and how
well they have been recorded. To my ear the Capriccio engineers have found
just about an ideal balance between the soloists and the orchestral detail.
The sophistication of Shostakovich's scoring is an unending source of delight.
By sophistication do not assume that it is thick or complex - far from it.
Instead the telling use of low winds or a stroke on a deep tam-tam is so well
gauged that it requires a recording as subtly fine as this one for those colours
to register.
If the opening cycle is powerfully impressive the coupling on the first disc
Suite on verses by Michelangelo Buonarroti Op.145a emerges as a true
masterpiece. The opus number shows that it is a very late work - indeed from
the last year of the composer's life. It comes immediately after the death-haunted
String Quartet No.15 Op.144 and is only two shy of the very last work,
the remarkable Viola Sonata Op.147. Fully aware of his own mortality,
in this work he pours scorn on the Soviet State. It has a direct oracular
quality that the earlier set did not dare attempt. This is one of three cycles
here set for a bass soloist. Jurowski has the luxury of using three different
singers each of whom is both idiomatic but more importantly a very fine interpreter.
For this suite it is Anatoli Kotscherga and he is simply magnificent. The
opening song is called Truth [track 12] - over the sparsest scoring
- often no more than a pair of two simple lines - the soloist declaims "I
had hoped that your greatness would raise me up, not as a false echo for people
in high places, but as a sword of justice". By this time in his life
clearly Shostakovich chose not to mince his words and more to the point he
has the compositional skill to set these denunciations with a surgeon's skill
- no note or gesture is wasted or superfluous. The emotional highpoint comes
with the pair of songs that form the sixth and seventh of the cycle; Dante/To
the exile. Here Shostakovich unleashes a more powerful instrumental group
against which the bass rails; "and to your shame you increased the sufferings
of your son, thus baseness takes revenge on perfection". No obfuscation
or blurred meanings here - this is the composer going for the state's throat,
plain and simple. How to write a movement to follow that? More slippery mis-direction
and settings in stark contrast to content. So Immortality [track 21
- No.11] closes the cycle with a merrily chirpy piccolo whistling away banally
while the singer says; "I am as though dead, but as a comfort to the
world, with its thousands of souls, I live in the hearts of all loving people..".
Some might find this disconnection between word and music frustrating. I honestly
feel it is pure genius forcing you the listener to decide: does he mean what
he says or what he sounds like he's saying. As elsewhere in the set
the playing of the orchestra both as an instrumental group but especially
as soloists is technically highly accomplished but also wonderfully expressive.
Why this work is not more widely known escapes me for it is surely one of
the most profound musical testaments by any great composer of any age.
The contents of the second disc do not - how could they? - equal that of the
first but the performances are just as fine. Quite why Shostakovich turned
to the bass voice for his most profound vocal utterances I have never heard
a convincing explanation for. I do not believe that it is to do with favourite
performers along the lines of Rostropovich inspiring the cello works. As well
as the three cycles here there are important solo bass parts in the 13th and
14th Symphonies as well as The Execution of Stepan Razin. I wonder
if it has more to do with the Russian musical heritage of such voices - Shostakovich's
admiration for Mussorgsky is well-known and the eponymous Boris Godunov
is just one such part. The Three Romances on poems by Alexander Pushkin
Op.46a are the most 'public' songs here. Nominally composed to celebrate
the 100th anniversary of the poet's death these were written in the immediate
potentially disastrous aftermath of the "muddle instead of music"
article allegedly penned by Stalin himself. Now here's a little puzzle - the
first poem's first verse "An artist-barbarian with his idle brush, blackens
a picture painted by a genius" opens with the singer's melodic line copying
the fanfare that opens the finale of the Symphony No.5 - which has the next
opus number more to the point. This is followed by an innocent little string
figure which is the twin of that just before the launch of the final few pages
which are seen as mindless state-sponsored optimism or hollow victory. An
accident or a figuration that happened to be on his mind at the time? I don't
think so, Shostakovich was far too aware of subtext and implication ever to
'accidentally' quote anything. The bass here is Anatoli Babykin who has a
deeper more resonant doleful sound than the visionary Kotscherga. The liner
gives this as Op.46a which according to a list I have seen would imply the
small orchestra version; the same list gives an alternative as Op.46b which
is a setting for strings. From what I can hear that sounds like the instrumentation
(plus a harp) used here. In any case this is a fine miniature but far from
trivial cycle which again deserves greater dissemination. The third cycle
featuring a bass is the Six romances on verses by English Poets Op.62/Op.140.
The original for voice and piano was composed between the mighty 7th and
8th Symphonies so you might expect this anthology - the poets include Shakespeare,
Sir Walter Raleigh and three by Robert Burns - no doubt delighted to be included
with other English poets were he alive to comment - to provide some emotional
respite for the composer. Well, in part that is true but each setting was
dedicated to someone from whom the war had separated him and by using Pasternak's
translation of Shakespeare's 66th Sonnet "And art made tongue-tied by
authority, And folly (doctor-like) controlling skill" he still seems
congenitally forced to confront perceived injustice. Part of the fascination
for the listener is to hear how the 1970 Shostakovich revisits his material
from some twenty-five years earlier. The melodic material is less bleached
and minimalist than other of the late works but the pared-back orchestration
is another master-class in economy of gesture and texture. This is not a 'big'
cycle in either physical or emotional scale in the sense that the pair on
the first disc are but once again the range and depth of expression here is
immensely involving. Stanislaw Sulejmanov is the third bass and he matches
his compatriots for impressive sound and identification with the music. Rather
different in terms of the emotional landscape it occupies is the early 6
Romances on words by Japanese Poets Op.21. This is about as near to a
cycle of love songs as Shostakovich ever wrote. The opus number places it
between the Symphony No.3 and The Age of Gold - so in terms
of the composer's career relatively untroubled times. The orchestration is
contemporaneous too but fascinatingly different from either of the mentioned
works. Reading the lyrics they could loosely be termed as being about love
[the second in the cycle Before Suicide rather confounds that theory]
but an innocent ear listening to them would have little idea that traditional
'romance' was involved. These are settings for tenor and for the most part
Shostakovich sets them cruelly high which adds to the sense of discomfort
- perhaps pierced by love? The tenor here Vladimir Kasatschuk opts for taking
the highest notes in falsetto which gives it a rather other-worldly sound.
Järvi's tenor is Ilya Levinsky who takes everything in full voice. Of
the cycles here this is the one that appeals to me least but again one can
only marvel at the composer's total assurance in his handling of text and
music. The same values apply to the final cycle - another very late work -
the Six Poems of Marina Tsvetayeva Op.143a. Interestingly the scoring
is richer than that for the Michelangelo cycle. Tsvetayeva had been an exile
from the Soviet Union for 17 years before returning in 1939. Within two years
she despaired of the new order she found and committed suicide. Her poems
were not published until the 1960s. Although there is implicit criticism in
these texts too the through-message of the poems is artistic creativity. This
is another very impressive work superbly performed here by the mezzo-soprano
Tamara Sinjawskaja. She has a lighter voice than some Slavic mezzos but again
she uses it to powerfully sympathetic effect. Again the playing of the orchestra
is excellent and the engineering near ideal in combining instrumental detail
in an overall convincingly natural orchestral picture. I like the way too
on a couple of occasions the orchestra overwhelms the singer - there is an
element of theatricality about that that again suits the text very well.
Regardless of the relative lack of catalogue competition this is a set of
some very fine music making indeed. The Michelangelo Suite I would place as
one of this composer’s half-dozen finest works and thereby a piece that should
be in the collection of every admirer of Shostakovich. Michail Jurowski impresses
by his concentrated control as do the Cologne players who immerse themselves
wholly in the demanding and often austere world of these song-cycles. Such
is my admiration of the music-making and the engineering of this set that
I have left my two caveats to last. One is minor and one - in the context
of these works - is not. The minor one is the CD cover. Who at Capriccio in
their right minds allowed the art department to take the words "Russian"
and "romance" and visually translate with dumb literal ignorance
that into the cover shot we have here. Some pouting model in furs in front
of a horse - so laughably stupid it must go into the top ten list of inappropriate
covers of all time. The major concern is the liner. The note is adequate but
no more with a brief outline of the works but no real discussion of them.
Also, there are no biographies of the singers. Far far worse is the fact that
the texts printed are only in German and English. There is no Russian original
or transliteration. Given Shostakovich's hyper-sensitive settings, not being
able to follow every syllable is a major disappointment. Yes, most of the
time you can have a pretty good idea of where they are in the setting but
it is a bad oversight. Frustrating though this is I would still strongly urge
collectors to hear this movingly confessional music in these very fine performances
especially since the set is being sold at a twofer mid-price point.
Nick Barnard
I would strongly urge collectors to hear this movingly confessional music
in these very fine performances.