Shostakovich: Symphonies Nos. 3 and 14

CML call number: CD/CLASSICAL/Shostakovich
Anne Midgette wrote in the New York Times: "The pairing of the Symphonies Nos. 3 and 14 traces a biographical arc. … The Bavarian Radio Symphony is a deluxe ensemble for a tough assignment. In the Third, a pretty paean to the First of May, Shostakovich toed the Soviet party line in an intellectual exercise: writing a piece based on the finale of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony without repeating a phrase. Although it conveys a sense of both forward propulsion and superficiality, [conductor Mariss] Jansons and the fabulous Bavarian Radio Chorus find beauty and a kind of majesty in an idiom that Shostakovich, in his later works, more often shaded toward bluster. The Symphony No. 14, by contrast, is an emotional center of Shostakovich's output, a chamber orchestra setting of poems about death by Rilke, Apollinaire, Lorca and Küchelbecker. Larissa Gogolewskaja and Sergei Aleksashkin, stars of the Kirov Opera, bring a markedly Russian vocal thickness to deeply felt readings that are not always pleasing but well worthy of respect. And Mr. Jansons leads the rich strings of the orchestra to create vividness without pathos."