Luogo e data di registrazione		Moscow: - 1968 (Op. 107) - 1983 (Op. 34) - gennaio 1984 (Op. 112) - 1985 (Op. 113)
	Registrazione: live / studio		studio
	Recording Engineers		Igor Veprintsev (Op. 112, Op. 107, Op. 34) Severin Pazukhin (Op. 113)
	Prime Edizioni LP		Melodiya
	Edizione CD		BMG Classics "2 CD Twofer" 74231 63460 2 | 2 CD - 67' 57" - 76' 31" | (c) 1999 | (p) 1970, 1983, 1984, 1987 | DDD/ADD*
	Note		Front cover: Ilya Glazunov, "Rus", 1968

"For Jew-haters I am a Jew..." Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975) first conceived the idea of writing a Lenin Symphony as early as 1938, but it was not until 1961 that he unveiled the resultant piece at the Twenty-Second Congress of the Soviet Communist Party, a congress at which the parallel processes of de-Stalinisation and Leninisation reached a gruesome simultaneous climax. Shostakovich openly admitted that he had started out with one particular portrait of Lenin in mind but had reached a totally different conclusion from the one originally envisaged. What had happened in the meantime? With the political thaw of the 1950s, Shostakovich had assumed a number of high-ranking state appointments and, having walked the corridors of power, had come to see that there was no essential difference between ine ruler and the next. What was true of Stalin was no less true of his successors. According to Shostakovich, they possessed "no trace of ideology, no ideas, no theories and no principles. They exploited existing conditions on an ad hoc basis in order to tyrannise their subjects with optimal effectiveness". Narrow-minded, despotic, wilful and pragmatic - such epithets could sum up Khrushchev, too. And so Shostakovich lost any illusions that a wise leader might actually exist. And he did so when he recalled "The Year 1917", to quote the subtitle of his Twelfth Symphony. Premièred in Leningrad under Yevgeny Mravinsky on 1 October 1961, it was interpreted in East and West alike as an act of compliance with Communist doctrine and either praised or criticised accordingly. Gennady Rozhdestvensky took it into his repertory in 162. Thematically speaking, the work is circular in structure, revolving, as it does, around the ideas of manifestation, resolution and return. There are no musical contrasts, no conflictual struggles, no traces of parody. The opening movement ("Revolutionary Petrograd") opens with the statement of a motto theme that is also heard in the following movements and that is the only one to be developed in full: all the others remain mere fragments. Razliv (the heading of the second movement) was Lenin's hideout in Karelia, where he wrote many of his revolutionary tracts. A salvo from the armoured cruiser Aurora (the title of the third movement) gave the signal for the capture of the Winter Palace that is generally regarded as the start of the October Revolution. (To describe this quasi-legendary event as the "storming of the Winter Palace" is to fly in the face of history, as the Palace was not defended.) The title of the fourth movement, "The Dawn of Humanity", can be taken as a simple celebration of the Revolution or as an invitation to break free from the cult of a leader like Lenin. Shostakovich's own interpretation is clear from a self-quotation from his Second Symphony of 1927, a work dedicated "To Occtober": it was still not possible to break free from what Kant had called "self-inflicted immaturity". The First Cello Concerto in E flat major op. 107 was written in the summer of 1959 and received its first performance in Leningrad on 4 October 1959. (Shostakovich's only other contribution to the medium dates from 1966.) The conductor was again Mravinsky and the soloist Mstislav Rostropovich, who also gave the North American première on 7 November 1959, when the Philadelphia Orchestra was conducted by Eugene Ormandy. The concerto was soon described, notentirely seriously, as a "symphony with obbligato cello", a description that emphasised its dense thematic writing and conceptual ambitions. For the rest, however, this term is completely misleading, inasmuch as the piece is all about the expression of individuality, an individuality which, in keeping with tradition, is championed by the soloist who literally sets the tone. It is the soloist, after all, who opens the concerto with a motto theme that recurs in every movement and that is both cheekily energetic and at the same time harried. With the exception of a horn in F, Shostakovich gets by in this piece entirely without brass instruments, an abstemiousness that is all the more surprising in that grotesque capers on trumpets and trombones had become a hallmark of his style. In the opening Allegro in E flat major, the horn follows hard on the heels of the cello, trying its hand at the latter's melodies and clearly proving that when two people do the same thing, the result is by no means identical. In other words, Shostakovich is here speaking out against the current practice of confusing legitimate egalitarianism with the desire to reduce the whole of mankind to the lowest common denominator. The second movement is in A minor and opens with a brief and mystical passage on the strings suggestive of nothing so much as a sarabande. Here the horn has a quite different function, and the c ello reacts to its lushly Romantic calls with a deeply heartfelt melody that finally dies away as though in the furthest distance. All that remains are signs that time itself is slipping away on the cello and celesta. The third movement is a cadenza entrusted to the soloist alone. One has the impression that the soloist ist brooding on the preceding themes as he takes them up and develops them in a technically highly demanding passage involving multiple stopping, chords, polyphonic writing and left-hand pizzicati. The final movement is cast in the form of a rondo, a harried orchestral Allegro in which the soloist has to struggle to maintain his superiority. Gennady Rozhdestvensky conducted the piece for the first time in Moscow in 1960, when the soloist was Mstislav Rostropovich. The present recording was made eight years later, with Mikhail Khomister as the soloist. Shostakovich's Symphony no. 13 in B flat minor op. 113 for bass soloist, bass chorus and orchestra dates from 1962. A setting of poems by Yevgeny Yevtushenko (born 1933), it is both a warning and a reminder of Jewish pogroms both past and present. To the surprise of many onlookers, anti-Fascism and anti-Semitism were by no means mutually exclusive in Soviet Russia. Fascism was officially declared a morbid manifestation of capitalism, and capitalism alone. Anti-Semitism, by contrast, continued to serve its age-old function of providing a scapegoat in times of crisis. Thus there arose the paradoxical situation whereby the Red Army freed the world - and, hence, the Jews - from Fascism at the very time that the Soviet state was hounding its own Jewish citizens. As a poet, Yevtushenko came to prominence with his public readings of his anti-Stalinist poems and was enormously popular with young audiences in the early 1960s. Shostakovich sought to ground his music in words since, by his own admission, words offered him "a certain safeguard against absolute stupidity". Many of hir earlier symphonies had been misunderstood or reinterpreted and misappropriated by the powers-that-be, and he was determined that this would not happen again. Like Yevtushenko, Shostakovich was not Jewish, but "for Jew-haters I am a Jew", to quote from the symphony's opening movement- Babi Yar is the name of the ravine near Kiev where 34,000 local Jews were murdered by German soldiers from the SS and Wehrmacht on 29 September 1941. Words and music recall different stages in the annihilation of the Jews from ancient Egypt to 20th-century Soviet society. Included here are an allegretto episode associated with Anne Frank and a scherzo that suggests nothing so much as a caricature of racism and nationalism. The second movement is headed "Humour", in this case the folk wit before which even the greatest dictator is bound to capitulate, while the third movement ("In the Store") is an Adagio that tells of the heroism of women, of their twofold occupations at home and at work, their tolerance of official bullying and the brutalisation of morals. In the fourth movement, "Fears", Shostakovich conjures up a sense of torment in a cold and glassy Largo. And in the final movement ("Career"), the lives of artists and scholars are passed in review: careers that are dedicated to the pursuit of power are rejected, while those devoted to compassion receive the aythor's blessing. Existing values are overturned in a kind of Last Judgement. Celesta and bells remind us of death and of the irrevocable passage of time. The Thirteenth Symphony was an appeal for tolerance. Above all, however, it asked probing questions as to the why and wherefore of materialistically orientated, ideologically indocrinated Soviet society and expressed a sense of concern about basic values. This meaning was immediately clear to the audience at the work's triumphant first performance in Moscow, under Kyrill Kondrashin, in December 1962, hence the fact that for the next few years all further performances were banned by the authorities. Gennady Rozhdestvensky conducted it for the first time in Chicago, although not until 1985 was he able to record it in Moscow. Shostakovich was also a brilliant pianist and at the beginning of his career wrote a number of works for his own in the concert hall. The very title of his 24 Preludes op. 34 of 1932/33 clearly recalls their model, Johann Sebastian Bach. It was, in fact, by no means an obvious model to choose, in that the Thomaskantor - a quintessentially German composer of essentially sacred works - was out of favour with the Russian cultural authorities, and it was not until many years later that Shostakovich could officially mark the bicentenary of Bach's death with his pianistic masterpiece, his 24 Preludes and Fugues op. 87 of 1950/51. Shostakovich's op. 34 Preludes immediately caught the attention of such internationally acclaimed pianists as Heinrich Neuhaus, Lev Oboroin and Artur Rubinstein, all of whom took the piece into their repertory. As with almost all of Shostakovich's works from this period, these 24 Preludes present a paradox, combining, as they do, apparently irreconcilable opposites, being both poetic and prosaic in expression, mischievously witty and daintily playful, profoundly constructivist and at the same time pared down to their barest essentials. Their expressive precision, the transparency of their part-writing and the colourful nature of their melodic and harmonic writing immediately invited transcriptions and orchestrations. A violin transcription by Dmitri Tsyganov, the first violinist of the Beethoven Quartet (itself the dedicatee of the composer's Twelfth String Quartet of 1968), proved particularly popular, in addition to earning Shostakovich's approval. The version heard here is by the internationally acclaimed Croatian composer and pupil of Messiaen, Milko Kelemen (born 1924), who orchestrated eight of these Preludes and assembled them in the form of a suite. The Seventh Prelude in A major serves as an andante introduction, its pastoral tone underscored by solo writing for the cello. The combination of gracefulness, cheekiness and naivety in the C sharp minor Prelude no. 10 are brought out in the surprisingly prominent piano part in Kelemen's transcription. One of Shostakovich's most popular pieces, this was also one of the composer's own personal favourites and, as such, a piece that he frequently played. In no. 22 in G minor, two voices enter into dialogue in a contemplative, pastoral Adagio that stands in stark contrast to the polka-like strains of the Prelude no. 8 in F sharp minor, with bassoon and muted trunpet tripping the light fantastic in Kelemen's transcription. The Prelude no. 14 in E flat minor provides the cycle with its tragic climax, an Adagio that Leopold Stokowski, too, was later to orchestrate and include in his concert programmes. Shostakovich himself instrumented in 1943 and incorporated it into his soundtrack for the film Zoya. The D minor Allegretto (no. 24) proves a wide-ranging piece in Kelemen's orchestration, extending, as it does, from braying brass to the ethereal sounds of the celesta. With its pianissimo and espressivo amoroso, the Largo of no. 17 in A flat major is a serenely carefree piece that becomes a kind of moto perpetuo in the ensuing Allegro vivace (no. 5 in D major) that brings the cycle to its fleet.footed close. Kelemen's suite received its forst performance in Soviet Russia in 1982. The conductor was Gennady Rozhdestvensky. Sigrid Neef (Transl.: U.K.)