Dmitri SHOSTAKOVICH (1906-1975)
24 Preludes and Fugues Op.87 (1951) [146:26]
Ronald STEVENSON (1928-2015)
Passacaglia on DSCH (1962) [86:15]
Igor Levit (piano)
rec. May 2020, Jesus-Christus-Kirche, Berlin (Shostakovich); February 2020, Leibniz-Saal, Hannover Congress Centrum, Hanover (Stevenson)
SONY 19439809212 [3 CDs: 232:41]
Igor Levit burst upon the musical scene in 2013 with a recording of the late Beethoven sonatas (review). His followups were no less ambitious: a set in which he recorded the Bach Goldberg Variations and the Beethoven Diabelli Variations together with Rzewski’s Variations on ‘The People United will never be Defeated’ in 2015 (review) and the complete Beethoven piano sonatas in 2019 (review). His latest offering is no less of a blockbuster: not only Shostakovich’s set of Preludes and Fugues but also the massive Passacaglia on DSCH, a homage to Shostakovich by Ronald Stevenson. This occupies the whole of the third disc of this set, which has been given the overall title of In DSCH. (DSCH was Shostakovich’s musical monogram, representing part of his name in German musical notation.)
In 1948 Shostakovich found himself once again out of favour with the authorities and condemned for ‘formalist’ tendencies, a catch-all term which meant whatever the authorities wanted it to mean. He responded by dividing his work into two kinds: public compositions such as incidental music for films and official compositions, and private works, which he kept in his bottom drawer until a better time. These included some of his greatest works. such as the first violin concerto and the tenth symphony. In 1950 he attended a Bach festival in Leipzig, then in the newly founded East Germany (the German Democratic Republic). He was very impressed by Tatiana Nikolayeva, who played the whole of Bach’s Well Tempered Clavier, which led to Shostakovich writing his own set of twenty four Preludes and Fugues, in all the major and minor keys. She was the work’s dedicatee and its first performer. Shostakovich played it himself to an audience of officials in 1951, when it did not go down well, but, fortunately, a performance the next year by Nikolayeva went much better, whereupon the work was published and entered the repertoire.
Shostakovich’s Preludes and Fugues will surprise those who know him mainly from his symphonies. For a start they are mostly quiet. The Fugues are longer than the preludes and often much longer than Bach’s keyboard fugues usually are. They show Shostakovich as a master contrapuntalist, revelling in contrapuntal devices and entirely comfortable with them. He is also fond of using pedal effects and his harmony is occasionally deliberately angular and brusque. I think he may have been influenced here by another twentieth century work conceived in the shadow of Bach, Hindemith’s Ludus tonalis of 1942. There is a wide variety of moods among the pieces but they are predominantly gentle and meditative.
Levit is a wonderful exponent of this work. His first virtue is clarity: you can follow every line, there is no blurring or romantic mushiness, even when he has to keep the sustaining pedal down to hold a bass note while the harmony shifts above it, as in Prelude 9. All the fugues are clear and easy to follow He can play very beautifully: I particularly noted Preludes 13 and 22. He can respond to the perky humour of Fugue 2 and the sardonic waltz of Prelude 15. He can also give of his best in the sometimes forceful Beethovenian writing, such as Fugue 15. I could go on – my notes run to several pages – but I do not need to: Levit encompasses the whole wide range of these pieces.
There have been several previous recordings of the Shostakovich, but the inevitable comparison has to be with Nikolayeva. In fact she recorded the work three times, in 1962 and again in 1987 for Melodiya and in 1990 for Hyperion. (There is also a filmed performance of 1992 on Medici Arts and there have been various reissues of the audio versions.) The general opinion of these seems to be that the best played was the first, made with the composer standing by, and that the later ones are less good though the recording quality improves. I made some comparisons with my copy, which is the 1987 version. Nikolayeva’s authority cannot be questioned, but to my mind she does not catch the humour of some of these pieces as well as Levit and her performance tends to be a bit dour: Levit finds more light and shade and his recording is far better.
Stevenson was a virtuoso pianist-composer in the tradition of Liszt and, in particular, Busoni, whom he specially admired. His Passacaglia is one of those monumental twentieth-century piano works which include Busoni’s Fantasia Contrappuntistica, Ives’ Concord Sonata and the Rzewski variations which Levit has already recorded. It is in three parts which play without a break, and each part is divided into a number of separate movements. Pars prima is in seven movements which survey musical forms of the past, beginning with a sonata-form movement, then a waltz, a baroque suite in several dance numbers, a Pibroch (Lament for the children) transcribed from a Scottish bagpipe tune and a Nocturne. The forms may be old but the idiom is Stevenson’s own, though the opening is heavily influenced by the opening of the Busoni Fantasia.
Pars altera looks outward, in ten movements, which include Glimpses of a War-Vision, Variations on ‘Peace, Bread & the Land’ (1917) – the phrase was a slogan of Lenin – and Pedal-point: ‘To emergent Africa,’ a powerful movement which evokes some of the darker movements in Messiaen’s Vingt Regards, which I don’t know whether Stevenson knew.
Pars tertia then has a concluding and summarizing role. It begins with a short Adagio: tribute to Bach, which leads into a huge triple fugue. Into this Stevenson weaves not only the DSCH motif but also the BACH motto from the unfinished fugue at the end of the Art of Fugue, and also the Dies irae, noted as In memoriam the six million, referring to the Holocaust. Here again Stevenson is indebted to Busoni’s Fantasia, which is in part a reworking and completion of that same unfinished Bach fugue.
Despite being restricted by his passacaglia theme, this is a very varied work. The theme is not just the four notes of the DSCH motto, but runs to seven bars, and Stevenson allows himself different versions of it. He also changes key, has many rhythmical variations and intriguing harmonies – again owing a debt to Busoni. There are plenty of ideas. However, I have to admit that my attention started flagging in the Pars tertia. I started to feel I had heard the DSCH motto too often and the texture of the triple fugue seemed grey. I think I shall try listening again to just this section alone, which I can do thanks to the fact that every separate movement is given its own track. However, this is not a criticism of Levit’s playing which is throughout resourceful and enthusiastic.
Despite its length and difficulty there have been several previous recordings of the Passacaglia. There are two by Stevenson himself. His 1964 version has been reissued on APR (review) and his 1988 one on Altarus. However, it was John Ogdon’s 1966 version which really put this work on the map. Unfortunately, his version, which was on EMI, does not yet seem to have been transferred to CD. Later versions include a 1994 one from Raymond Clarke, a 1998 one from Mark Gasser (review), a 1999 one from Murray McLachlan (review) and a 2013 one from James Willshire (review). As this is not a work for the faint-hearted, all these have attracted good reviews. I have not heard them, but I can say that this new one by Igor Levit is beautifully recorded and makes the best possible case for the work. Is it a masterpiece? I don’t know, but it is certainly worth hearing. This enterprising coupling is a rewarding issue.
Stephen Barber
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