Dmitri Shostakovich: Symphony No. 13

On this CD:

1. Symphony No. 13 in B flat Minor, Op. 113 (Babi Yar)
Composed by Dmitry Shostakovich
Performed by Dusseldorf Symphony with John Shirley-Quirk
Conducted by David Shallon

Dmitri Shostakovich: Symphony No. 13, Music, Dmitry Shostakovich, David Shallon, Düsseldorfer Symphoniker, John Shirley-Quirk, 20th/21st Century Symphony with Solo Voice and Chorus, Classical, Symphonic

Ovation--Shostakovich: Symphony No. 13 / Haitink
Average customer rating:

A well of sorrows, and some thin writing from Shostakovich

Sounds Great, But Misses The Heart

A MUSICAL MONUMENT

A stunning performance

Begins and Ends with the Toll of the Bell

Ovation--Shostakovich: Symphony No. 13 / Haitink
Bernard Haitink , Marius Rintzler , Royal Concertgebouw Men's Chorus , and Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra
Manufacturer: Decca
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

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ASIN: B00000IP3H
Release Date: 2000-08-08

Tracks:

Symphony No.13 In B Flat Minor, Op.113 'Babi Yar': I. Adagio: Babi Yar
Symphony No.13 In B Flat Minor, Op.113 'Babi Yar': II. Allegretto: Humour
Symphony No.13 In B Flat Minor, Op.113 'Babi Yar': III. Adagio: In The Store
Symphony No.13 In B Flat Minor, Op.113 'Babi Yar': IV. Largo: Fears
Symphony No.13 In B Flat Minor, Op.113 'Babi Yar': V. Allegretto: A Career

Customer Reviews:

A well of sorrows, and some thin writing from Shostakovich.......2005-10-05

The 13th Sym. was an exciting political event when Ormandy (I believe it was) premiered the work in the U.S., coming as a Cold War protest work from a major Soviet artist--two, actually, since the renegade poet Yevtushenko, who wrote the text, was a darling of the cultural thaw as well. In retrospect, the Thirteenth Sym. hasn't weakened to the extent that Shostakovich's equally renowned Seventh Sym. has. The music in the first movment holds up well, as it should since the poem, Babi Yar, with its brave protest against Russian anti-Semitism in World War II, remains a cry from the heart.

But the reamaining four movements rapidly decline into something like politically correct protest against the daily hardship of life for the common Russian--not a great subjet for inspiring music. It takes a lot for a conductor to overcome the banality and dreariness that settles into this well of sorrows.

Haitink's performance is blessed with excellent sound and orchestral execution--both far ahead of any rival CD from Russia, although the live performance from Prague under Maxim Shostakovich on Supraphon is competitive. It is also more commiited and angrier than Haitink's reading, which tends to sound a bit too polite. in both cases the chorus and bass soloist are very good.

Frankly, I get fatigued hearing a Boris Godunov-type bass dwelling on sorrow for fifty minutes, so it was a happy event to find that one recording--the Sinaisky on the BBC label, a live tape from a Proms concert in London--features a lighter baritone in the excellent Sergei Leiferkus. He is an accomplished vocal actor, better than any bass I've heard in this part, and his leaner voice makes the protest poetry sound moe urgent. Otherwise, I keep the Hiatink and M. Shostakovich sets on my shelf as very good alternatives.

Sounds Great, But Misses The Heart.......2003-12-14

As other reviewers point out, this is a monumental, great sounding performance. It is also heavy handed, slow, and misses something essential to the work that Shostakovich created in his Symphony #13. What is the 'Babi Yar' symphony? It began when Shostakovich read Yevtushenko's controversial poem 'Babi Yar' and decided to set it to music. He then expanded the work into a song cycle of settings of Yevtushenko's poems, one of which was specifically written for the cycle. The heart of the work is the bass who sings these songs. A male choir responds to and ampifies what the soloist sings. The orchestra fills out and illustrates the music that the soloist sings. This is the work Shostakovich wrote. It is not what Haitink delivers. In this massive performance, he clarifies the structures and textures of the accompaniment and puts them first. The chorus and soloist are just pieces of a symphonic puzzle to be elucidated and virtuosically played. The performance is almost the reverse of Shostakovich's intention. The considerable emotional range of each of the songs is flattened by Haitink's heavy hand into relative monotony. (When you hear another bass sing this, you'll understand) The slow, tightly controlled tempos don't help matters. Whatever you may think of Yevtushenko's poetry, they are NOT emotionally flat or tightly controlled! There are livelier performances of this work out there that are truer to nature of this symphony, even though they are generally less available. Keep looking. It's worth it.

A MUSICAL MONUMENT.......2003-07-06

This is surely a 5* effort of its type, the type being a big-scale, forceful, in-your-face type.The recording is right for such a reading being very clear and sharply etched, the orchestral playing is magnificent and the bass solo is majestic as he would have to be to stay in keeping but with an appropriate sense of reticence too - any suggestion of Amonasro or Wotan or even Boris Godunov would have been wince-making.

Part of Mahler's legacy is that things now get called symphonies that Brahms or Bruckner would have called cantatas. To me this `symphony' is a cantata. Indeed in the old Rozhdestvensky version the bass solo is semi-spoken, which would make it a `parlata' if there is such a word. Where it is completely different in spirit from Brahms or Bruckner or Bach or Handel is in the music being subordinate to the message, not the other way about as it always is with them. There are five separate but linked messages, the frustrated, ironic and distraught states of mind of `a stranger and afraid/In a world he never made'. The poems are by Yevtushenko, and I would imagine (I have no Russian) that the purely poetic element is similarly subordinated to the themes expressed. To me music is always a separate thing from any themes or messages it is associated with, and that is probably why I have never fully come to terms with Shostakovich from whose standpoint such thinking might well have seemed a bit of a luxury. Purely as music this work ought to impress anyone of even the slightest sensitivity, but for all its power it still leaves me unable to identify a distinctive musical personality in this composer the way I can identify the personality of Prokofiev. Shostakovich is eclectic, very adroit with all the styles he adopts, but is there some `real' musical identity that I can derive from the music itself without reference to his biography, which is not the way I like to approach any music? To compare him in artistic significance with Saint-Saens would be outrageous, but in that respect they have a strange similarity.

Obviously the Babiy Yar atrocity is the most powerful of the 5 themes here. The work was composed in 1962, a mere 20 years after the event itself and the events elsewhere in Europe with which it had such a conspicuous and frightful affinity. 40 years on the pious orthodoxy is that we must make sure that such an event never recurs. In actual fact we have had all-too-similar events in Cambodia, in Rwanda and in Yugoslavia, the last two sharing the particularly filthy characteristic of being racially-motivated. Not only have we failed to prevent these, we seem to have all but forgotten them, and a new Holocaust-industry is now serving some strange objectives. I retain faith that the race that gave the world Mendelssohn and Mahler, to say nothing of Einstein, can yet rise above what has become self-obsession and lay the injustices finally to rest with a monument as noble and powerful as this.

A stunning performance.......2003-05-05

I have always seen #13 as the greatest of Shostakovich's symphonies. Its moods include despair, defiance (both loud and quiet), anger at oppression, but ultimately ends in a mood of some optimism. Ultimately it affirms that the artist has a duty to speak the truth, no matter what the risk. The artist must force people to acknowledge what they would prefer to ignore, and although the artist may suffer greatly for this, he will ultimately triumph and be remembered.

Shostakovich was certainly writing from the heart when composing this symphony, and the result is a gripping work from beginning to end. Haitink and the Concertgebouw Orchestra have done an excellent job. I believe this is the finest of Haitink's Shostakovich cycle. Some people have criticized his treatment as being heavy-handed, but I don't see how one could listen to the final movement and make that accusation,

This is an essential CD for any Shostakovich collection. If you know Shostakovich only for his 5th Symphony, then you will be in for a suprise.

Begins and Ends with the Toll of the Bell.......2002-07-13

The story goes that Shostakovich read Yevtushenko's poem "Babi Yar" in a journal, and immediately wanted to set it to music, and in fact he had practically done the work when he called the poet for permission to use the poem. Then began a kind of collaborative process in which Yevtushenko wrote four other poems, so that settings of the five would together comprise a symphony for orchestra, solo bass and men's chorus.

The first movement is so marvelously dramatic and so perfectly complements the text, that anything I might say would be superfluous. Shostakovich's talent for building "brute textures" here has full play, in music of searing directness and simplicity.

"Humor" is a heavy-booted scherzo for the second movement; a little too heavy perhaps, though it absolutely serves the text (rulers have commanded parades, demonstrating their might, but they cannot command humor, which is always a power of the people).

Where in his eighth symphony, Shostakovich wrote a symphony with two scherzi, here in the thirteenth, he pulls off two slow movements. The first of these, "In the Store", begins with a low-string monologue, establishing a long-breathed rhythm which is maintained throughout. Most of the movement is fairly quiet, like the lives of the Russian women whose strength and perseverance is commemorated in the poem, and who bore the brunt of the injustices and hardships of the Soviet era. A long crescendo builds to accentuate indignation at their treatment by self-interested merchants ("It is shameful to short-change them, It is sinful to short-weight them").

Such were the circumstances of his life, that Shostakovich refined the writing of gloomy music to an intense degree; the opening of the fourth movement, "Fears," with its seemingly aimless muffled tuba, grumbles in the percussion played so softly that you strain to hear them, a keening melody in the low strings, and then the men's choir coming in on a monotone, "Fears are dying out in Russia" ... in a way personally unfortunate for the composer, but artistically fortunate for the world, Shostakovich had been prepared by long years to write just such a chilling passage of musical understatement.

The last movement, "A Career" alternates between a tired, and almost strangely complacent, waltz theme introduced by the flute, and a bumptious setting of the text itself, so that when the bass solo and the men's choir are present, the feeling of the second movement ("Humor") is distantly recalled. But the bouncy music evolves into a fughetta, which turns edgy with the horn entrance; this subsides into a graver mood for the voices ("Those who hurled curses have been forgotten, We remember the ones they cursed"). The bells which opened the symphony come back, softer, the nostalgic waltz returns in the strings ... at the last, a final toll of the bell dies away into silence.

Tracks:

Allegretto - Slovak Philharmonic Chorus
Allegro - Slovak Philharmonic Chorus
Lento - Slovak Philharmonic Chorus
Allegro Molto - Slovak Philharmonic Chorus
Allegretto-Allegro-Andante-Allegro-Largo-Moderato - Slovak Philharmonic Chorus

Tracks:

Symphony No.2 In B Major, Op.14 'October' - Slovak Philharmonic Chorus
Allegretto - Slovak Philharmonic Chorus
Adagio - Slovak Philharmonic Chorus
Allegretto - Slovak Philharmonic Chorus
Adagio - Slovak Philharmonic Chorus

Tracks:

Allegretto Poco Moderato
Moderato Con Moto
Largo-Allegretto

Tracks:

Moderato
Allegretto
Largo
Allegro Non Troppo
Allegro
Moderato
Presto
Largo
Allegretto

Tracks:

Largo
Allegro
Presto
Revolutionary Petrograd
Razliv
Aurora
Dawn Of Humanity

Tracks:

Allegretto
Moderato (Poco Allegretto)
Adagio
Allegro Non Troppo

Tracks:

Adagio
Allegretto
Allegro Non Troppo
Largo
Allegretto

Tracks:

Moderato
Allegro
Allegretto
Andante: Allegro

Tracks:

The Palace Square
The 9th Of January
In Memoriam
The Tocsin

Tracks:

Babi Yar - Slovak Philharmonic Chorus
Yumor (Humor) - Slovak Philharmonic Chorus
V Magazinye (At The Store) - Slovak Philharmonic Chorus
Strakhi (Fears) - Slovak Philharmonic Chorus
Karyera (Career) - Slovak Philharmonic Chorus

Tracks:

De Profundis - Magdalena Hajossyova
Malaguena - Magdalena Hajossyova
Loreley - Magdalena Hajossyova
The Suicide - Magdalena Hajossyova
On The Alert - Magdalena Hajossyova
Look Here, Madame! - Magdalena Hajossyova
At The Sante Jail - Magdalena Hajossyova
Zzaporozhye Cossacks' Reply To The Sultan Of Constantinople - Magdalena Hajossyova
O Delvig, Delvig! - Magdalena Hajossyova
The Poet's Death - Magdalena Hajossyova
Conclusion - Magdalena Hajossyova

Amazon.com

Newly repackaged in a space-saving, super-bargain box, the Naxos Shostakovich cycle may entice shoppers looking to acquire the 15 symphonies cheaply and all at once. Certain performances are better than others. The First, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, 10th, and 12th require more dynamism and heft than the Czecho-Slovak Symphony Orchestra give Ladislav Slovák, notwithstanding marvelous first-desk solos. By contrast, the caustic wit and slippery chamberlike qualities of Nos. 9 and 15 are expertly realized. Bass Peter Mikulas and soprano Magdaléna Hajóssyová enliven and brilliantly characterize texts in the two "song symphonies," Nos. 13 and 14. Slovák, in turn, revels in the disjunctive sound worlds of the Second and Third, and traverses the Fourth, Seventh, Eighth, and 11th with an eagle-eyed overview of their sprawling canvasses. You shouldn't be without key individual recordings like Bernstein's 1959 New York Philharmonic Fifth, Berglund's 11th, or Haitink's 13th, and Rudolf Barshai's bargain cycle on Brilliant Classics offers greater sonic impact and more personalized conducting. Still and all, the present set's finest moments are worth the modest investment. --Jed Distler

Customer Reviews:

Rough-Edged, but Compelling.......2002-03-07

I like this set. I'm not about to claim that it's perfectly played or beautiful to listen to; Inbal on Denon, Haitink on Decca and Rostropovich on Teldec all command better - and more opulent sounding - orchestras than the Slovak Radio Symphony. But there is a certain raw honesty about these Naxos performances that I find tremendously appealing. The Shostakovich symphonies, after all is said, aren't 'haute cuisine' music. They reflect some of humankind's ugliest experiences and their beauties always come packaged in scar tissue. For that reason, I've always enjoyed the 'rough and ready' Shostakovich played by east european and Russian orchestras: the performances just seem more truthful. That's the case here, although I intend no disrespect toward Inbal, Haitink and Rostropovich (especially the latter who was, of course, a great friend of the composer). But Ladislav Slovak has his own Shostakovich credentials and they are solid. He worked in the 1950s with the great Yevgeny Mravinsky at the Leningrad Philharmonic when it was one of the world's greatest orchestras. Mravinsky was one of Shostakovich's favorite conductors and he performed most of these symphonies, some for the first time, and many under Shostakovich's direct supervision. So Slovak saw a lot and up close. Nevertheless, Slovak's performances aren't slavish copies of Mravinsky. He has his own ideas. For example, listen to the richly barbed irony Slovak projects in symphonies 1 and 9, or how well he conveys eloquence, without pomposity, in the problematic 7th ('Leningrad') symphony. Or listen to Slovak's tight and cogent performances of two of Shostakovich's most fascinatingly diffuse scores, symphonies 4 and 11 ("The Year 1905"). In short, Slovak is never less than thought-provoking and if his orchestra were better, I think his achievement would be more widely acclaimed. As it is, the orchestra plays quite competently, with particularly alert and characterful woodwinds (usually; they miscalculate the magical opening of the last movement of Symphony 13). If the orchestra suffers from a consistent fault, it's that there aren't enough strings to sound comfortable playing "above the stave," as the British say. No matter; the imagination, intensity & spirit of these performances are what count with me. In fact, I think there's only one out-and-out failure in the set: a performance of Symphony 12 that's just too slow and heavy, making a tedious piece seem even more tedious than usual. (Mravinsky played this symphony at breakneck speed; surely the only way to make it endurable!) I wish I could say that the digital sound quality is consistently fine, but it varies too much from performance to performance. It's never less than good, but variable. Still, don't get me wrong: warts and all, this set's a real bargain. Eleven (11) cds come packaged in a compact box with an extensive booklet that includes full texts and translations. Final word: cheap without quality is false economy. In spite of the shortcomings I've mentioned, there's real quality here.

Average customer rating:

mesmerizing Shostakovich
Lively Perfomance, Great Singing

Dmitri Shostakovich: Symphony No. 13

Manufacturer: Koch Schwann (Germ.)
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

General | Symphonies | Classical | Styles | Music

General | Classical | Styles | Music

Tracks:

Sym No.13, 'Babi Yar', Op.113, in b flat, for bar, ch, & orch: I. Babi Yar
Sym No.13, 'Babi Yar', Op.113, in b flat, for bar, ch, & orch: II. Humor
Sym No.13, 'Babi Yar', Op.113, in b flat, for bar, ch, & orch: III. In The Store
Sym No.13, 'Babi Yar', Op.113, in b flat, for bar, ch, & orch: IV. Fears
Sym No.13, 'Babi Yar', Op.113, in b flat, for bar, ch, & orch: V. Career

Customer Reviews:

mesmerizing Shostakovich.......2007-05-04

This is my favorite recording of the great 'Babi Yar'. John Shirley-Quirk sings the score with an unbridled reach of passion and musicality. He and conductor Shallon cast the symphony with a liturgical pallor that gives the mighty thing cohesion and a strange calm. The Dusseldorf Symphony is recorded beautifully. Shallon's musicianship is front and center - he's a superb center of calm. It shines in his work. The reason for this recording is of course Shirley-Quirk's audacious, heartbreaking, utterly musicianly singing of a great score, a great symphony. The Dusseldorf players are elegant in the long singing passages of Im Laden, even witty. Shallon sets them loose to soar with the great baritone in the performance of a lifetime. This is a great recording. (Interestingly, I find the few 'live noises' actually enhance the listening experience.)

Lively Perfomance, Great Singing.......2003-11-27

This Shostakovich #13 is quite good if you can adjust to certain idiosyncrasies of its live recording. The audience is pretty quiet, there is some stage noise from the performers (page-turning, etc.) and the dynamic range is quite wide, making it hard (for me, anyway) to find a satisfactory volume level. That being said, the performance is vigorous and compelling. The great John Shirley-Quirk is still kicking it out in really magnificent style.

Average customer rating:

One of the few great recordings of Shostakovich's 13th.

Shostakovich: Symphony No. 13, Op. 113

Manufacturer: Supraphon
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

General | Classical | Styles | Music
ASIN: B000003504
Release Date: 1996-01-23

Tracks:

Sym No. 13, Op. 113: I. Babi Yar. Adagio
Sym No. 13, Op. 113: II. Humour. Allegretto
Sym No. 13, Op. 113: III. In the Store. Adagio
Sym No. 13, Op. 113: IV. Fears. Largo
Sym No. 13, Op. 113: V. A Career. Allegretto

Customer Reviews:

One of the few great recordings of Shostakovich's 13th........2005-01-14

The composer's son, Maxim Shostakovich, conducts the Prague Symphony Orchestra in the cathartic 'Babi Yar' symphony.

This digital recording, made 1 February 1995, features superb performances all-around.

If trying to get all fifteen symphonies collected, this would be an excellent 'Babi Yar' to acquire.

Music Track:

Music Track

music track

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