Classical Music: Shostakovich Symphonies 12 And 15

Under the baton of John Storgård, who took up the post of the BBC Philharmonic’s Chief Conductor last year, the orchestra delve into Shostakovich’s mind in two exciting symphonies.

From the outset of Symphony 12 (‘The Year 1917’) it is thrilling all the textural colouration shining through. It was a project that Shostakovich had been planning and discussing for two decades – a symphony about Lenin.

The first movement, ‘Revolutionary Petrograd’, depicts the arrival of Lenin in Petrograd in April 1917 and his meetings with the working people of the city. The second, ‘Razliv’, commemorates the site of Lenin’s retreat to the north of the city. ‘Aurora’, the third movement, refers to the Russian battleship the revolutionary mutinous crew of which fired the first shot of the attack on the Winter Palace. Finally, ‘The Dawn of Humanity’ celebrates the ultimate victory of the Great October Socialist Revolution. Musically, the Twelfth seems to regress to a more simplistic musical language than that of the immediately preceding Symphony – which some commentators ascribe to Shostakovich’s joining the Communist Party and perhaps trying harder to meet its expectations.

The orchestra responds brilliantly to capture the different emotions whether it be the reflective strings creating an intensity with a lovely dark sound at the beginning of the first movement, especially the cellos and double-basses, the grimacing woodwind or the percussion and brass driving the performance through with large impressive sounds creating drama through musical climaxes. As David Fanning points out in his fascinating notes it is a series of tableaux or philosophical reflections using the long-established currency of Shostakovich’s personal musical language. It certainly has a cinematic feel.

The Fifteenth (and last) Symphony was written entirely in July 1971, at a composer’s rest home in Repino, north-west of Leningrad. It was his first non-programmatic symphony since the Tenth, and Shostakovich was wary of discussing the meaning of it, but eventually commented that it might be understood as representing the journey from life to death.

I thoroughly enjoyed this performance Storgård had me hooked from the quiet opening of the glockenspiel and the William Tell references in the first movement to the fabulous different sectional solos. I listened with rapt attention to the controlled percussion especially the way the mysteriousness came through in beautiful moments in the both adagios. The delightful woodwind at the beginning of the third movement and the enigmatic opening of the fourth movement adagio with Shostakovich quoting from Wagner (the ‘Fate’ motif and the rhythm of Siegfried’s death scene from Götterdämmerung) all added to gripping performances.

I was absorbed by the orchestra’s driven rhythmic vitality and attentiveness to the minutiae of the score.

A superb presentation recorded in Surround-Sound and available as a Hybrid SACD at MediaCityUK, Salford.