These
are important recordings though well established in Shostakovich’s
discographic canon. What’s frustrating is that Metropole has gone
to the effort of issuing them without attribution, without researching
recording dates with real accuracy and with only a few brief paragraphs
introducing the discs – in German and English. Volume two will
apparently conclude the series by reissuing the remainder of the
Preludes and Fugues but since this is a confusing enough situation
I should note the following:
Nos. 1-8, 12, 13 and
14 have appeared on Revelation Records RV 70001 whilst nos. 16
and 23 (1951), 17 and 18 (1956), 20, 22 and 24 (1952) turned up
on Revelation RV 70003. Of the latter disc Nos.17 and 18 are missing
from this Metropole, which does in any case consist of two very
well filled discs. So we can assume that they will soon be appearing
in the companion volume. I doubt they’d have access to the 1958
EMI composer recordings of Nos. 1, 4, 5, 23 and 24, which you
can find on EMI CDC 7 54606 2 and EMI Classics 7243 5 62646 2.
By the reference to the “remainder” I mean
that I assume Metropole will also include the recordings Shostakovich
taped in 1960 - Nos. 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 16, 20 and 23, which have
all been released on Le Chant du Monde LDC 278 1000.
You can gather from
this that these particular performances have done the rounds and
that Metropole, of whom I had not previously heard, has done some
trawling amongst pre-existing material. They’ve also included
the reduction for four hands of the Tenth Symphony Op.93b in the
famous performance by the composer and Mieczslaw Weinberg (Moise
Vainberg) made in 1954.There have been three CD incarnations to
the best of my knowledge with both the companies above predictably
active - Le Chant du Monde LDC 278 1000 coupled with the Preludes
and Fugues as noted above. Revelation Records RV 70002 contained
this performance as well, as did Yedang Classics YCC 0164. Apropos
of little in this context you might like to seek out the 1992
recording of the reduction made by the powerful two-man crew of
Gräsbeck and Zelyakov on Bluebell ABCD 049.
Sound quality has
not improved on that of the other releases – I’ve not heard the
Yedang so can’t comment on that one – and as already noted documentation
is cursory. That said, these are profoundly important documents
and invaluable as examples of Shostakovich’s pianism.
Jonathan Woolf
Dmitri Shostakovich (piano) 
