This recording is the second of two which this symphony received in the West
soon after the work’s première in October 1957, but it has always
been overshadowed by the first made in the previous month by the Houston
Symphony Orchestra under Leopold Stokowski. Stokowski’s version has
always been overrated both as a performance and for its sound quality: the
first movement is taken at far too impatient a tempo for an adagio,
and the warm string tone which Stokowski encourages here is inappropriate
for music which ostensibly portrays Leningrad’s frozen Palace Square
in January 1905, whilst the depiction in the second movement of the 9th January
massacre by the Tsar’s troops makes only a muted impact, due to recessed
percussion and a soft toned, glossy and excessively reverberant recording.
On my copy of the CD (an American import on the Angel label) the second and
third movements, which are supposed to play continuously, are separated clumsily
by a nonsensical pause; this alone would be enough to disqualify the recording
from serious consideration, even without the editing disaster in the finale,
where the huge climax from the percussion section (three bars before fig.162
in the score) is omitted.
Many collectors will remember Cluytens for his Beethoven symphony cycle with
the Berlin Philharmonic which appeared on the budget Classics for Pleasure
label in the early 1970s. His version of Shostakovich’s Eleventh Symphony
was recorded in May 1958 for EMI during the same period that Cluytens recorded
the piano concerti with the composer himself as soloist. Shostakovich was
present when the symphony was taped, so some degree of authenticity can be
assumed here, although, unlike the composer’s compatriots, the French
musicians would have had no inkling of the ambiguity of the programmatic
undercurrent of this work (Shostakovich stated in his memoirs that the symphony
"deals with contemporary themes even though it’s called 1905", a hint,
supported elsewhere, that the symphony relates to the 1956 Hungarian uprising,
violently suppressed by the USSR) and no doubt they accepted the piece at
its face value, as a commemoration of the Russian uprising of 1905.
The orchestra’s precision is not ideal, the tone of French wind playing
will not be to every listener’s taste, and the cymbal player seems to
ad lib his part throughout, but the sheer commitment of the performance suggests
an orchestra which was keen to impress the distinguished visiting composer.
The opening adagio is consistent in timing with both Mravinsky’s
1959 recording (on Revelation) and the same conductor’s 1967 version
(on Praga) but the tempo adopted by Cluytens for the third movement, also
an adagio, is much slower than Mravinsky’s. The mood suggested
by the subtitle to this movement ("In Memoriam") is well conveyed by the
French players, and this produces a convincing foil for both the energy they
display in the previous movement and for the relentless fury of their performance
of the finale. Testament give a timing of only 12’25" for the last movement,
which includes a few seconds’ silence at the end of the CD, and whilst
the short duration is accounted for partly by a faster than usual presentation
of the long cor anglais solo at fig.163, the tempo for the main section is
nevertheless very fast. The playing here, although rather raw, sustains a
high voltage which equals, and in some passages even surpasses that which
we expect from Russian orchestras in this work.
This remastered recording sounds remarkably fresh for its age, but for the
sake of hi-fi buffs, duty compels me to mention faults with the original
engineering of the French recording: exaggerated separation between left
and right in the stereo image, limited dynamic range, slight tape hiss and,
as the first movement progresses, an increasing number of gentle low frequency
thuds, three thuds being particularly noticeable at 9’28". Nevertheless,
if played back at a realistic volume, the sound has considerable presence,
and is much clearer than on either of the two roughly contemporaneous versions
mentioned above: Mravinsky’s Revelation version or Stokowski’s,
sonically richer though the latter is, admittedly.
Cluytens would not be my recommendation if you wish to have only one version
of the symphony in your library, but Shostakovich enthusiasts may wish to
know whether this reissue is worth buying as a supplement to more modern
recordings of this symphony which are already in their collection. Yes, it
is: over forty years after being taped, this performance can still stir the
listener.
Reviewer
Raymond Clarke
Performance
Recording
French
Radio National Orchestra, conducted by André Cluytens.
