MusicWeb International One of the most grown-up review sites around 2024
60,000 reviews
... and still writing ...

Search MusicWeb Here Acte Prealable Polish CDs
 

Presto Music CD retailer
 
Founder: Len Mullenger                                    Editor in Chief:John Quinn             


Some items
to consider

new MWI
Current reviews

old MWI
pre-2023 reviews

paid for
advertisements

Acte Prealable Polish recordings

Forgotten Recordings
Forgotten Recordings
All Forgotten Records Reviews

TROUBADISC
Troubadisc Weinberg- TROCD01450

All Troubadisc reviews


FOGHORN Classics

Alexandra-Quartet
Brahms String Quartets

All Foghorn Reviews


All HDTT reviews


Songs to Harp from
the Old and New World


all Nimbus reviews



all tudor reviews


Follow us on Twitter


Editorial Board
MusicWeb International
Founding Editor
   
Rob Barnett
Editor in Chief
John Quinn
Contributing Editor
Ralph Moore
Webmaster
   David Barker
Postmaster
Jonathan Woolf
MusicWeb Founder
   Len Mullenger


 
REVIEW


Advertising on
Musicweb


Donate and keep us afloat

 

New Releases

Naxos Classical
All Naxos reviews

Chandos recordings
All Chandos reviews

Hyperion recordings
All Hyperion reviews

Foghorn recordings
All Foghorn reviews

Troubadisc recordings
All Troubadisc reviews



all Bridge reviews


all cpo reviews

Divine Art recordings
Click to see New Releases
Get 10% off using code musicweb10
All Divine Art reviews


All Eloquence reviews

Lyrita recordings
All Lyrita Reviews

 

Wyastone New Releases
Obtain 10% discount

Subscribe to our free weekly review listing

 

 

alternatively
CD: AmazonUK AmazonUS
Download: Classicsonline


Dmitry SHOSTAKOVICH (1906-1975)
Symphony No. 5 in D minor, Op. 47 (1937) [51:36]
Symphony No. 9 in E flat major, Op. 70 (1945) [26:31]
Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra/Vasily Petrenko
rec. Philharmonic Hall, Liverpool, U.K., July 2008
NAXOS 8.572167 [78.07]

Experience Classicsonline

Most of those who bought Petrenko’s Liverpool Shostakovich 11 will want this disc too. They’ll be right, it’s a magnificent achievement and, at the price, an outstanding bargain.

Two things strike the unprepared listener when hearing this performance of the Ninth for the first time. The first is the remarkable unanimity of the playing, by which I don’t only mean the ensemble, which is disciplined and tight, but also the sense of unanimity of purpose, a group of musicians playing together in the same spirit and with the same goal. They really listen to each other, and are clearly convinced and motivated by their conductor’s vision and methods. The second is the remarkable quality of the solo playing, so important in this work whose very sound is dominated by the woodwind. I found myself wondering at the sheer bravery of principals in an orchestra. How would you like to be the RLPO’s first clarinet, for example, the night before this recording, thinking about the minute-long solo, barely accompanied by a few pizzicato strings, preserved for posterity by an unforgiving microphone? Or the first bassoonist, allocated about the same amount of time to fill our hearts with Russian gloom whilst sitting in an art deco hall in Liverpool? Well, this has always been a fine orchestra, but a number of initiatives in recent years, not least the appointment in 2006 of Vasily Petrenko as Principal Conductor has transformed it into one of world class. You won’t hear cleaner playing than that of the opening of the Ninth, nor more brilliantly unanimous driving rhythms than those of the absurdly brief third movement. The symphony, short and brisk, disappointed the authorities who were expecting an imposing work to complete the trilogy begun with the seventh and eighth symphonies. It is apparently an optimistic work, rather carefree, but if Shostakovich ever penned a single unequivocal bar of music I don’t know where to find it, and this symphony is certainly as enigmatic as the others, with its real meaning perhaps even better hidden than most. Whether we would think as much of it were it not part of this particular composer’s canon is another matter. Had it come from the pen of Kabalevsky or Khachaturian I think we might have dismissed it as something inconsequential. I’m very attached to Bernstein’s 1965 New York performance, similarly coupled (Sony, Bernstein Century Series), and wonder if he was not well advised, surprisingly for him, to avoid Petrenko’s extremes of tempo for the second and third movements. Then there are other performances from the Russian greats of an older generation which perhaps sound more authentic. But I think the next time I want to listen to the Ninth it will be Petrenko and his Liverpool ensemble that I will take down from the shelves.

The disembodied tone of the first violins in the sixth bar of the Fifth Symphony immediately announce another distinguished performance. It is left to the piano, staccato, to introduce the faster, central section of this first movement, and it is in this passage that we first encounter a characteristic of this performance, which is a certain excitability, with a tendency to slightly self-conscious tempo changes. The closing pages of the movement are as desolate as one will hear anywhere, though. The woodwinds are brilliantly perky in the scherzo, and the orchestra’s leader, unnamed, is outstandingly good in the short violin solo. I miss some bite from the horns here, as I also do in the faster section of the first movement, but only because I’m thinking of the Vienna Philharmonic horn section for Jansons on EMI, as hollow and menacing as you are ever likely to hear. The individual strands of the string writing in the opening paragraph of the slow movement are analytically clear, allowing us to savour the sometimes unnoticed piquancy of the harmony, and this attention to harmonic detail is also a feature of the performance as a whole. The flute and harp passage at figure 79 in the score [3:02] is beautifully done, but this ends with an indication to hold back and then immediately return to the basic pulse. Here, however, Petrenko launches the following section at a tempo significantly slower, and though this is undeniably expressive and powerful, I wonder if the performance doesn’t feature a little too much of this kind of freedom in the face of what is marked in the score. There are many examples of this, as there are of places where he encourages his players, wind soloists in particular, to rhythmic freedom at the ends of phrases, expressiveness which can sometimes seem pasted on rather than growing naturally out of the musical material. The climax of the movement is excellent, as is that of the first movement, though the superb Liverpool orchestra cannot yet muster the sheer power of the finest European or Russian ensembles. The often ethereal pianissimo playing, on the other hand, is outstanding. The finale is brilliantly played, but the most controversial feature of this performance is likely to be Petrenko’s way with the closing pages, dogged and defiant rather than victorious, as is the way nowadays, but slower and heavier than I think I have ever heard them. This would be sensational in a live performance, particularly since the ensemble sustains the heavy pulse valiantly right up to the final chord, but whether one really wants to hear this passage so drawn out every time is another matter.

To sum up, this is a fine performance of the Fifth and one not to be missed. Petrenko’s is quite an individual view, and a challenging one which demands to be heard, even if listeners may not be in sympathy with every aspect of it. Speaking personally, I find others more convincing. The old Previn performance with the London Symphony Orchestra is still very impressive, but sounds lightweight and conciliatory now that we are used to the post-Volkov reading of the symphony. I also very much admire Mariss Jansons’ reading, but I would urge all admirers of this composer, and this symphony in particular, to seek out Maxim Shostakovich’s live performance with the Prague Symphony Orchestra from 1976 (Supraphon). He takes his time over the work just as Petrenko does, and is just as uncompromising, but without the slight trace of excess that, in my view, slightly mars this new reading.

William Hedley

see also review by Leslie Wright
(January 2010 Bargain of the Month) 


 


EXPLORE MUSICWEB INTERNATIONAL

Making a Donation to MusicWeb

Writing CD reviews for MWI

About MWI
Who we are, where we have come from and how we do it.

Site Map

How to find a review

How to find articles on MusicWeb
Listed in date order

Review Indexes
   By Label
      Select a label and all reviews are listed in Catalogue order
   By Masterwork
            Links from composer names (eg Sibelius) are to resource pages with links to the review indexes for the individual works as well as other resources.

Themed Review pages

Jazz reviews

 

Discographies
   Composer
      Composer surveys
   National
      Unique to MusicWeb -
a comprehensive listing of all LP and CD recordings of given works
.
Prepared by Michael Herman

The Collector’s Guide to Gramophone Company Record Labels 1898 - 1925
Howard Friedman

Book Reviews

Complete Books
We have a number of out of print complete books on-line

Interviews
With Composers, Conductors, Singers, Instumentalists and others
Includes those on the Seen and Heard site

Nostalgia

Nostalgia CD reviews

Records Of The Year
Each reviewer is given the opportunity to select the best of the releases

Monthly Best Buys
Recordings of the Month and Bargains of the Month

Comment
Arthur Butterworth Writes

An occasional column

Phil Scowcroft's Garlands
British Light Music articles

Classical blogs
A listing of Classical Music Blogs external to MusicWeb International

Reviewers Logs
What they have been listening to for pleasure

Announcements

 

Community
Bulletin Board

Give your opinions or seek answers

Reviewers
Past and present

Helpers invited!

Resources
How Did I Miss That?

Currently suspended but there are a lot there with sound clips


Composer Resources

British Composers

British Light Music Composers

Other composers

Film Music (Archive)
Film Music on the Web (Closed in December 2006)

Programme Notes
For concert organizers

External sites
British Music Society
The BBC Proms
Orchestra Sites
Recording Companies & Retailers
Online Music
Agents & Marketing
Publishers
Other links
Newsgroups
Web News sites etc

PotPourri
A pot-pourri of articles

MW Listening Room
MW Office

Advice to Windows Vista users  
Questionnaire    
Site History  
What they say about us
What we say about us!
Where to get help on the Internet
CD orders By Special Request
Graphics archive
Currency Converter
Dictionary
Magazines
Newsfeed  
Web Ring
Translation Service

Rules for potential reviewers :-)
Do Not Go Here!
April Fools






Untitled Document


Reviews from previous months
Join the mailing list and receive a hyperlinked weekly update on the discs reviewed. details
We welcome feedback on our reviews. Please use the Bulletin Board
Please paste in the first line of your comments the URL of the review to which you refer.