Bach: Variaciones Goldberg.

Johann Sebastian Bach

GOLDBERG-VARIATIONEN , BWV. 988

Glenn Gould, Piano

(CBS)

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    La legendaria grabación de 1955, y cuyo disco debe ser considerado dentro de los 100 más importantes de la historia de la música académica grabada.

Shostakovich: Sinfonía Nr. 14.

Dimitri Shostakovich

SINFONIA Nr. 14, Op. 135

Galina Vishnevskaya, Soprano

Mark Reshetin, Bass

Moscow Chamber Orchestra

Dir: Mstislav Rostropovich.

(REVELATION)

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  “ Todo lo que he escrito a través de todos estos largos años ha sido una preparación para esta obra… deseo que las audiencias, al dejar el salón tras escuchar mi sinfonía, sientan que la vida es realmente bella…” Dimitri Shostakovich.

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   La Sinfonía Nr.14 de Shostakovich fue compuesta en 1.969 y dedicada a su amigo y colega Benjamin Britten, quien dirigió la premiere occidental en el Festival de Aldeburgh el 14 de Junio de 1.970. La obra es en estructura una serie de canciones orquestales, considerada como sinfonía al haber una aparente conexión temática entre cada una de las canciones. Realmente se trata a grosso modo de una paráfrasis que el maestro soviético hace de dos compositores que fueron referencia permanente para él: Gustav Mahler y Modest Mussorgsky. Las estructura secuencial de "Das Lied von der Erde" es más que referencial, mientras que de Mussorgsky toma el patrón dramático de sus ¨Canciones y Danzas de la Muerte¨ que él mismo llegó a orquestar. Constituye un paso en avance con respecto a su experimento sinfónico anterior, la Sinfonía Nr.13. La 14 es una obra oscura, enigmática, nihilista, intrigantemente inquietante; una obra de muerte que hace transición a la redención esperanzada. Para un hombre como Shostakovich, en la etapa final de su vida creativa, con una salud mermante, obligado durante muchos años a callar y reprimir muchas cosas, ante la inminencia de una muerte próxima, la palabra cobró extrema importancia en su producción sinfónica.

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     La 14 fue estrenada el 29 de septiembre de 1969, en el Gran Salón de la Capella Académica de Leningrado, con la Orquesta de Cámara de Moscú, bajo la batuta de Rudolf Barshai, y con la participación de Margarita Miroshnikova y Evgeni Vladimirov como solistas. La primera grabación corresponde al mismo Barshai (1969), pero con la aparición de Galina Vishnevskaya y Mark Reshetin como solistas. Las grabaciones ideales de la 14 se reparten entre las realizadas por Barshai y las realizadas por Rostropovich. Aunque en general la grabación de Rostropovich de 1973 para el sello MELODIYA se considera referencia, su grabación de unos meses antes para el sello REVELATION es igual de determinate y es la que propongo para conocer.  

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   Agrego a continuación las siempr valiosas notas que hace al respecto el ya conocido Mark Wigglesworth:

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   Love and Death

 

Shostakovich went into hospital on 13th January 1969. Having never properly recovered from a heart attack of three years before, he had by now lost the comfortable use of his right hand and could hardly walk. In constant pain, he was suffering from the form of polio that would eventually kill him. The city’s flu epidemic meant that no visitors were allowed, but this solitude led him to focus entirely on what was to be his Fourteenth Symphony.

 

Seven years earlier he had orchestrated Mussorgsky’s Songs and Dances of Death. Mussorgsky had written this song cycle with piano accompaniment in 1875 and though it had later been orchestrated by Glazunov and Rimsky-Korsakov, Shostakovich felt that they had not done justice to the original songs of the man he considered the greatest of Russian composers. He also thought that the work itself was too short for the subject matter, and had long wanted to write a song cycle of his own that dealt with ‘the eternal themes of love and death’. His enforced stay in the Kremlin Hospital was a perfect opportunity to fulfil this wish and by February 16th he had finished the piece in piano score form, completing the orchestration two weeks later. Even by Shostakovich’s standards this was quick work, but fear of impending death had spurred him on. In a letter to his friend Isaac Glikman he explained: ‘I wrote very fast. I was afraid something would happen to me like, for instance, my right hand would give up working altogether, or I’d suddenly go blind or something. I was pretty tortured by these ideas.’ Nor did he relax once the work was completed. Even when the manuscript was being copied for publication, he would talk about how he wanted to make sure that he had remembered the whole piece, so that if the score was somehow lost, he would be able to write it all out again. Although he had originally written it for Galina Vishnevskaya to sing, her schedule meant that she was not free to learn it immediately and, as he didn’t want to wait, the premiere went ahead with a different soprano. ‘I’m afraid I’ll die soon and I want to hear my work. The Fourteenth Symphony is a landmark piece for me. Everything I’ve written over the last many years has been a preparation for this work.’

 

At the premiere, Shostakovich overcame his usual shyness to explain to the audience that ‘life is man’s dearest possession. It is given to him only once and he should live so as not to experience acute pain at the thought of the years wasted aimlessly or feel searing shame for his petty and inglorious past, but be able to say, at the moment of death, that he has given all his life and energies to the noblest cause in the world – to fight for the liberation of humanity. I want listeners to this symphony to realise that “life” is truly beautiful. My symphony is an impassioned protest against death, a reminder to the living that they should live honestly, conscientiously, nobly, never committing a base act. This is very important for much time will pass before scientists have succeeded in ensuring immortality. Death is in store for all of us and I for one do not see any good in the end of our lives. Death is terrifying. There is nothing beyond it.’ Shostakovich was arguing against the view that death is some glorious beginning to the afterlife. He disagreed with all the composers who had portrayed death with music that was beautiful, radiant, and ecstatic. For him, death really was the end and he took that as an inspiration to make sure that he lived his life to its full.

 

In the disputed memoirs that he is believed by many to have related to Solomon Volkov, he talks revealingly about death:

 

‘Fear of death may be the most intense emotion of all. I sometimes think that there is no deeper feeling. The irony lies in the fact that under the influence of that fear people create poetry, prose and music; that is they try to strengthen their ties with the living and increase their influence on them. How can you not fear death? I wrote a number of works reflecting my understanding of the question. The most important of them is the Fourteenth Symphony;  I have special feelings for it. I think that work on these compositions had a positive effect, and I fear death less now; or rather I’m used to the idea of an inevitable end and treat it as such. After all it is the law of nature and no one has ever eluded it. I’m all for a rational approach toward death. We should think more about it and accustom ourselves to it. We can’t allow the fear of death to creep up on us unexpectedly. I think that if people began thinking about death sooner, they would make fewer mistakes. That’s why I’m not very concerned what people say about the Fourteenth, despite hearing more attacks on it than any other of my symphonies. Though it is stupid to protest against death as such, you can and must protest against violent death. It’s bad when people die before their time from disease or poverty, but it is worse when a man is killed by another man.’

 

The Fourteenth Symphony is not about death but about unnatural death; death caused by murder, oppression, and war. In fact there is not one ‘normal’ death described in the whole work and it is significant that all four of the poets whose words Shostakovich chose to set died in somewhat less than natural circumstances. Lorca was shot without trial during the Spanish Civil War; Apollinaire died in 1918 from the wounds he received during World War I; Rilke died in 1926 at the age of 51 from a rare form of leukaemia, and Küchelbecker was sent to Siberia for his part in the failed Decembrist uprising against the Tsars in 1825, where he died deaf and blind in 1846. Shostakovich’s symphony is a tribute to all who have died in pain, but particularly to the fellow suffering artists with whom he felt such affinity.

 

The opening, almost introductory song is an elegy for a hundred dead lovers. The first melody of the De Profundis, ironically high in the violin register, makes immediate reference to the notes of the Gregorian Mass for the Dead whose Dies Irae theme has been used by so many composers over the centuries. Its timelessness as a melodic idea creates an eternal atmosphere. This is a piece for the past, the present, and for ever. The fact that the elegy is for lovers suggests that the victims died too young and, as if to strengthen that implication, Shostakovich adds to the original Lorca text the word ‘passionate’. It is the first of many changes that the composer made to the texts, every one revealing very clearly how he wanted these poets’ words to be interpreted in his own piece of music. Some victims in the Soviet Union were not even given the dignity of a gravestone at all, and the idea of crosses being erected ‘so that they will not be forgotten by the people’ would have been of great significance for Shostakovich. He often saw his music as some kind of cross that could perpetuate the memory of others.

 

The emotional emptiness of this prelude is typical of a grief that is so exhausted that it can’t even speak its name, but it also allows the Malaguena dance that follows to burst onto the scene with maximum ferocity. It is a brilliant aspect of this work that Shostakovich is able to use such limited orchestral colours to create such huge contrasts. It is very easy to listen to this piece without ever realising that there are only twenty-five people involved in the performance and that the vast majority are playing string instruments. We are instantly transported from the barren planes of Andalusia to the sweaty, dirty, and passionate smoke-filled rooms of a local Spanish bar, and yet the ever economical Shostakovich doesn’t even bring in the obvious touch of the castanets until the movement is almost over. You can almost smell the alcohol. Death is dancing on the tables and charging in and out of the tavern, but Lorca’s original poem concludes with the the fact that Death eventually leaves. Shostakovich decided instead to end it with the chilling difference: ‘Death will not leave’.

 

Death is a feminine word in Russian, and the legendary character of the sorceress Loreley has long been considered one of its strongest representations. Lorca’s version of the German poet Clemens Brentano’s poem inspires Shostakovich to be at his most operatic, using both singers to tell the story. This also gives the sense that the first two songs were introductions and that it is in Loreley that the symphony really begins. In virtuosic composing, Shostakovich effortlessly combines Wagnerian representations of the Rhine, alongside almost direct quotes of Dukas’ The Sorcerer’s Apprentice as well as using a twelve-note theme for the frenzied fugato that accompanies Loreley’s decision to throw herself off the cliff. Yet somehow these disparate ideas seem perfectly unified.

 

A lonely cello solo leads into the next song and combines with the voice to become a duet similar in style to one of Bach’s great passion arias. In French, the title of Lorca’s Le Suicide makes it clear that it is a man that has killed himself, but the Russian does not make this specific and that allows Shostakovich to imply that the suicide is Loreley’s. She in turn can be seen as a combination of the death figure of the Malaguena with one of the hundred lovers from the opening movement and these textural links, as well as many musical connections, enable Shostakovich to turn four highly individual songs into what can be heard as a long opening symphonic movement. The end of this song is the first time in the work that anyone gets a chance to draw their breath.

 

If the opening four songs are a complex first movement with many Mahlerian changes of tempo, so the next two are unquestionably the symphony’s scherzo. Shostakovich was forced to denounce twelve-tone serialism as typical of Western, bourgeois decadence but as a composer he was fascinated in later life by its harmonic implications. The opening xylophone melody of On the Watch has to be one of the most pleasant twelve-note melodies ever written but it still creates a sense of harmonic instability that is cleverly able to evoke the uncertainty and nervousness of a woman waiting at home whilst knowing that her lover is being killed in the trenches. The significant increase in the percussion part here is an appropriate tribute to Stravinsky’s Soldier’s Tale but, by combining the insecurity of a twelve-note theme with the extremely assertive xylophone colour, Shostakovich subtly points out the hollowness and stupidity of war itself.

 

The Loreley, who had grieved for her lover far away, has become the woman who knows her lover is being killed on the battlefield, and is obviously the same woman who in the next song laughs in despair in the knowledge that he is already dead. Never has the line between laughter and tears been so finely drawn as here, and it leads seamlessly into the longest song of the work, the start of the symphony’s slow movement.

 

The vast majority of the music so far has been sung by the soprano, and the change to the male voice is telling. It is as if Shostakovich himself is beginning to speak and certainly it is the next three songs that seem to be the ones whose texts are closest to the composer’s heart. In 1911, Guillaume Apollinaire was wrongly arrested and imprisoned for stealing a few statues from the Louvre in Paris and his poem In the Sante Prison was the result of his rather less than serious five-day stay in jail. When Alexander Solzhenitsyn discovered that Shostakovich had chosen to set it, he was furious, and wrote to the composer explaining that it was outrageous that he should honour the millions who suffered in the Gulags with a poem by a man who could never have understood the true level of suffering that occurred. But his complaints show that he cannot have heard the piece itself as Shostakovich’s slight changes to the text, alongside music that is harrowing in the extreme, makes this a terrifying description of the pain and suffering of the lonely prisoner. Apollinaire wrote of rays of sunlight and sounds of the city drifting in, but these lines are ruthlessly cut by Shostakovich. There is nothing consoling in his prisoner’s cell and the long pianissimo fugal interlude is an unforgettable depiction of time seeming to have stopped for ever. The occasional woodblock note seems to represent the slow dripping of water in some distant, deserted, dank corridor. At the end Apollinaire implies that the lamp left burning is some kind of friend, but Shostakovich allows no such sentimentality and, by saying that the only two friends there are the prisoner and his mind, it is clear that madness has finally set in. In Testimony, Shostakovich explained: ‘I was thinking about prison cells, horrible holes, where people are buried alive, waiting for someone to come for them, listening to every sound. That’s terrifying, you can go mad with fear. Many people couldn’t stand the pressure and lost their minds. I know about that.’

 

The anger felt at these injustices is given full vent in The Zaporozhian Cossacks’ Answer to the Sultan of Constantinople. The specific event referred to is the peasants’ response to the atrocities committed by the authorities whilst Mohammed IV was Sultan of Turkey from 1648-1687, and many Russians would have been aware of Ilya Repin’s 1891 painting with the same title which shows the crowd’s hysterical glee after their dictator had finally been deposed. But the image of the Cossacks dancing and laughing with grim joy on the grave of their oppressor is one that would have been wishful thinking to many of the composer’s contemporaries, and it is in this song that Shostakovich protests most specifically not at death itself but at the oppression that causes death. To quote Testimony again: ‘I don’t protest against death, I protest against those butchers who execute people. Stalin is gone but there are still more than enough tyrants around.’

 

The extreme dissonances of this movement have an obvious effect, but they also serve to point out even more the significance of the rewardingly consonant world of the song that follows. It is not a coincidence that here Shostakovich turns for the first and only time to a Russian poet, for it is this song that carries with it the fundamental message of the piece and as such it seems appropriate that the composer should seek to use his own language to express it. Küchelbeker was a friend of the Russian poet Delvig, who himself was killed by the police when he was aged just 33 and, in a tribute to him, he wrote a poem that explains how poets, who have always been hated and feared by tyrants because they alone dare to freely say what is true, are sent down from heaven by the Gods to relieve the sufferings of mortals. Küchelbeker’s poem, parts of which Shostakovich takes as his text, is a celebration of the artists’ power and the importance of their friendship in the face of tyranny. It is not hard to see why Shostakovich, who had experienced so many of his artistic friends murdered or imprisoned, should have responded so beautifully to such sentiments.

 

From the start, the experience of the symphony has been a traumatic one: massacres, suicides, trench warfare, broken hearts, solitary confinement, madness, and tyrannical oppression. But its message is that, despite the horrors of the world, it is Art that can still make lives worthwhile. No tyrant can murder a piece of music and no oppressor can take away the emotional experience of listening to one, and it is this song that makes what at first seems a very depressing symphony into an uplifting and inspirational one. Chamber music had always been the medium in which Shostakovich was best able to express his innermost thoughts and, combined with the fact that most of this song is played by a chamber group of only five players, its warm harmonic world and truly Russian text make it unequivocal that Delvig is the musical, emotional, and philosophical climax of the work. Human beings will always die, but Art will last for ever. Shostakovich felt that, whilst for the body death was the end and there was nothing nice that could be said about it, by creating great music, the spirit would be able to last forever.

 

Just as the first two songs in the cycle formed a kind of introduction, so the last two work together as a concluding movement. By changing Rilke’s opening line from ‘He lay’ to ‘The poet lay’, Shostakovich draws a link to the poet of the previous song but, by starting with a direct musical quote from the very opening of the whole symphony, there is a sense in which we are made to feel we have come full circle. In the end is our beginning. The text likens a body to the landscape it has known in life, and to a rotting fruit that it has become in death.

 

With what works like a coup de théâtre, the soloists sing together for the first time in the final song. Its conclusion is that death, as an all-powerful and inescapable presence, is with us not only at the end of our life but during it too, always watching and waiting. We are never to know when it might strike. Shostakovich felt that the ending to this symphony was the only completely true conclusion he had ever written.

 

At the premiere Shostakovich had spoken about the need for a special silence whilst listening to this work. His supporters were therefore particularly angry when, during one of the quietest moments, a huge crash was heard in the auditorium and a man made a hasty and clumsy exit. When it was revealed afterwards that this man was none other than Pavel Ivanovitch Apostolov, a party organiser and one of Shostakovich’s main critics and aggressive persecutors during the late 1940s, people assumed that his protest had been carefully planned for maximum distraction. Only later did it become known that it was during this performance that Apostolov had in fact suffered a heart attack; he was dead within a month. The irony was not lost on anyone.

 

Shostakovich agonised for a long time about what to call his work. ‘For the first time I find myself puzzled what to call my own piece.’ Initially he referred to it as an oratorio but then felt that, without a chorus, this was inappropriate. The fact that one could make a case for it as a song-cycle, a concert opera, a symphony, or perhaps even a piece of chamber music is further proof of what a great and unique work this is. As a piece of music that combines the best aspects of all these genres, and as one that, whilst visiting life’s most depressing subject, gives it the most inspirational of messages, I would argue that it stands as his greatest work of all.

 

© Mark Wigglesworth 1999

Sinfonías de Scriabin: Discografía Recomendada.

El caso de Scriabin es uno de los más particulares del sinfonismo ruso, pues siendo indiscutiblemente un compositor posromántico no se alínea ni con Tchaikovsky ni tampoco con el estilo nacionalista de ¨Los Cinco¨ y sus herederos. Su modernismo tonal, de gran originalidad, mira sin embargo a las masas sonoras wagnerianas y al impresionismo de Debussy. Siendo su obra eminentemente pianística, su catálogo orquestal es más bien reducido, pero bastante resonante. Dentro de él cinco obras orquestales catalogadas como sinfonías y bien diferentes una de la otra. Hagamos un paseo por una grabación ideal de cada una, tomando en cuenta calidad artística y sonora.  

La Sinfonía Nr. 1 ¨Himno al arte¨ es una obra en seis movimientos, cuyo último de los mismos es un coral profano dedicado ¨Al Arte¨ y donde la analogía con la 9na de Beethoven es inocultable. La obra fue estrenada en 1900, por lo que puede ser considerada una de esas grandes obras que marca el principio del siglo XX. La misma goza de una riqueza orquestal elaborada y requiere de grandes exigencias para el movimiento final, tanto a nivel de orquesta como de los solistas vocales y del coro. Habiendo buenas grabaciones provenientes de tierras autóctonas (Svetlanov, Fedoseyev...) resalta sin embargo y casi por opinión unánime la extraordinaria grabación de Riccardo Muti con la Orquesta de Philadelphia, en una rendición perfecta, hecha con total respeto por la partitura, con la orquesta de Ormandy rozando el cielo, solistas y coros totalmente convincentes. Es la 1ra que hay que poseer.

La Sinfonía Nr.2, compuesta en 1901, es la más tradicional de las sinfonías de Scriabin. Es una obra totalmente orquestal y está distribuida en cinco movimientos, aunque estructuralmente se pueden diferenciar cuatro partes, siguiendo el patrón sinfónico clásico. Las ideas cíclicas y usos de leitmotiv pueden sugerir influencias de la Sinfonía Nr. 5 de Tchaikovsky, de Wagner y de la Sinfonía en Re menor de César Franck.  Desde el punto de vista de escritura orquestal es su composición más ambiciosa. En cuanto a grabaciones, el legendario registro de Evgeni Svetlanov, ya presentado en ARPEGIO es un evento discográfico irrepetible, genialmente enfocado y planificado, aún con sus retoques percusivos que en ningún momento suena intrusivo. Un CD de colección, mejor aún si es la reimpresión del sello REGIS.

Scriabin se embarcó en su Tercera entre 1904-05. La Sinfonía Nr. 3 lleva nombre propio y se llama ¨El Poema Divino¨. Aunque va en cuatro partes (Introducción y tres movimientos), la continuidad entre ellas le permite ser considerada a su vez como un Poema Sinfónico, añadido al hecho de haber un Programa de índole filosófica que lo inspira.  Es una obra que en cuanto a discografía ha contado con mejor suerte que sus dos predecesoras, habiendo un puñado de excelentes grabaciones de entre el cual elegir. La extraordinaria grabación de Giuseppe Sinopoli al frente de la Fil. de New York para DG resulta en una fórmula de conciliación entre las diversas corrientes interpretativas. Sinopoli, poco o nada asociado a Scriabin, se compromete de lleno con la partitura, haciendo una lectura profundamente analítica y que disecciona de forma impresionante todos los aspectos de ésta música. La Filarmónica responde maravillosamente a los requerimientos del director, con excepcional fuego, colorido y precisión, logrando un resultado totalmente convincente y con una sensación de unidad y continuidad admirablemente naturales. Una excelente alternativa a cualquiera que se tenga como favorita. 

El ¨Poema del Extasis¨ es realmente y sin duda un verdadero Poema Sinfónico, aunque el compositor mismo se haya referido a él como su Sinfonía Nr.4. Fue compuesto entre 1905 y 1908 y está claramente inspirado en las ideas teosóficas en las que ya se hallaba inmerso Scriabin. Es una obra originalísima, dotada de gran belleza y riqueza orquestal.  Al igual que sucede con el ¨Poema Divino¨ la obra goza de una excelente discografía. Leopold Stokowski fue desde el principio uno de los más fervientes defensores de la obra, teniéndolo como caballito de batalla a través de todas su carrera artística y con al menos cinco grabaciones en su haber.  En una presentación de la obra en Filadelfia en 1919, con Stokowski en la batuta, llegó a llamar la atención de parte del público que abandonaba la sala durante la ejecución. Stokowski sostenía que se trataba de ¨una de las piezas mejor organizadas y una de las más complejas de la polifonía orquestal existente¨.  Las grabaciones de Stokowski reflejan su total compromiso y entendimiento de la partitura, siendo todas sus grabaciones auténticos portentos. Sin embargo a mi juicio creo que destaca una increíble ejecución hecha para el sello DECCA con la Orquesta Filarmónica Checa, resultante en un registro sonoro irrepetible, y disponible en esa legendaria tecnología Phase 4 Stereo.

 

   Llegamos finalmente a Prometheus ¨Poema del Fuego¨, última obra orquestal de Scriabin. Compuesta entre 1909 y 1910, es también en realidad un Poema Sinfónico, creado en su versión estándar para Piano y Orquesta.  Se basa en el mito de Prometeo, el titán, y musicalmente recopila toda la formación filosófica, mística y habilidades orquestales del compositor, incuyendo su habilidad para la sinestesia. Una grabación particularmente representativa y caleidoscópica de la obra es la hecha por Viktoria Postnikova, secundada por su marido, Gennadi Rozhdestvensky, en una lectura tremenda, sensual y maravillosamente balanceada, requisito indispensable para una ejecución correcta. Todo esto en el mejor sonido que nos ofrece por lo común el sello CHANDOS. 

Beethoven y Brahms Arreglados.

Ludwig van Beethoven

STRING QUARTET, Op. 95 (Orch. Arr. Mahler) 

Johannes Brahms

PIANO QUARTET, Op. 25 (Orch. Arr. Schoenberg)

Wiener Philharmoniker.

Dir: Christoph von Dohnányi.

(DECCA)

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Rimsky-Korsakov: Antar.

 

Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov

SYMPHONY Nr. 2, Op. 9 ¨ANTAR¨

USSR State Symphony Orchestra

Dir: Evgeni Svetlanov.

(RCA)

Grabada en El Arsenal de Metz, Francia, 1993.

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 La Sinfonía Nr. 2, o Suite Sinfónica ¨Antar¨ fue compuesta en su primera versión por Rimsky-Korsakov en 1868. Es la segunda obra sinfónica de grandes proporciones de su catálogo y sufrió revisiones en 1875 y luego en 1891.  Entre revisión y revisión, el compositor nunca decidió entre denominar a la obra definitivamente ¨Suite¨ ó ¨Sinfonía¨. Al crear su siguiente sinfonía, la Op. 32, respetó la numeración y le puso en Nr. 3. La misma sigue lineamientos programáticos, basados en un cuento orientalista de Sennkovsky, y musicalmente evidencia la influencia de Berlioz, principalmente de su ¨Sinfonía Fantástica¨.

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  ¨Antar¨ fue estrenada en marzo de 1869 en un concierto de la Sociedad Musical Rusa, bajo la batuta del propio compositor, con reacciones tibias y mixtas. Existen cuatro versiones de la obra:  la original de 1868, nunca publicada en vida del compositor (publicada finalmente en 1949);  la revisión de 1875, publicada por Bessel en 1880;  la revisión de 1897, que es considerada la versión preferible y más convincente de Antar, por incluir las reflexiones finales del compositor y reflejar mejor los lineamientos programáticos, publicada por Bessel en 1913, bajo supervisión del yerno del compositor, Maximilian Steinberg. Finalmente existe una llamada ¨versión de 1903¨, que no es más que un rescate mejorado de la versión de 1875.  A pesar de de ser preferible la versión de 1897 (cosa con la que estoy de acuerdo), la mayoría de intérpretes se han decantado por ésta última versión de 1903, al menos en cuanto a grabaciones se refiere.

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    Existe más de una controversia en torno a ¨Antar¨, incluso desde el momento de su composición.  Para algunos (entre quienes me incluyo) es una obra musicalmente superior a la famosísima ¨Scheherazade¨. En cuanto a las versiones, la de 1897 debería ser la de elección. De éste modo lo entendió uno de sus campeones, el director Evgeni Svetlanov, quien llegó a grabarla tres veces. Siendo todas sus grabaciones excelentes, probablemente su grabación más asertiva sea la digital de 1993, grabada para RCA en El Arsenal de Metz, Francia, en buen sonido digital.

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M-S.

 

Ravel - Haitink.

Maurice Ravel

1-4)  RAPSODIE ESPAGNOLE.

5)      MENUET ANTIQUE

6-13)  VALSES NOBLES ET SENTIMENTALES.

14)     ALBORADA DEL GRACIOSO

Koninklijk Concertgebouworkest Amsterdam.

Dir:  Bernard Haitink.

(PHILIPS)

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      Ultima entrega del ciclo homenaje a Maurice Ravel.

Dvorák: Piano Concerto.

Antonín Dvorák

PIANO CONCERTO, Op. 33

Robert Schumann

INTRODUCTION & ALLEGRO APPASIONATO

András Schiff, Piano.

Wiener Philharmoniker

Dir: Christoph von Dohnányi.

(DECCA)

*

Shostakovich: Babi Yar.

Dimitri Shostakovich

SYMPHONY Nr. 13, Op. 113

Jan-Hendrik Rootering, Bass

Netherlands Radio Symphony Orchestra.

Dir:  Mark Wigglesworth.

(BIS)

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Pocas obras han creado tanta expectativa, conflictos y pulsos de poder en su torno a su estreno como lo hizo Babi Yar, la Sinfonía Nr.13 del genio soviético. Pensada originalmente como una Cantata basada en poemas de Yevgeny Yevtushenko, fue finalmente planteada como una Sinfonía Coral y después de muchas cancelaciones y declinaciones por parte de potenciales intérpretes, estrenada en Moscú, el 18 de diciembre de 1.962 con la Filarmónica de Moscú, dirigida por Kirill Kondrashin.

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A continuación las valiosas notas del director Mark Wigglesworth, quien además nos ha legado una de las grabaciones más modélicas y asertivas de ésta gran página sinfónica, grabación propuesta para la presente entrega:

Tombstones

 

By 19th September 1941, the German Army had reached Kiev and a week later the following notice was put up around the city:

 

‘All Jews living in the city of Kiev and its vicinity are to report by 8 o’clock on the morning of Monday, 29th September 1941 to the corner of Melnikovsky and Dokhturov Streets (near the cemetery). They are to take with them documents, money, valuables, as well as warm clothes, underwear, etc. Any Jew not carrying out this instruction and who is found elsewhere will be shot.’

 

Most thought they were going to be deported and gathered by the cemetery, expecting to be loaded onto trains. Some even arrived early to ensure themselves a seat. Instead they were ordered towards a ravine known as Babi Yar and once there, made to undress. Those who hesitated had their clothes ripped off by force. They were then systematically shot and hurled into the gorge. If only wounded, they were killed with shovels. Some, especially the children, were just thrown in alive and buried amongst the dead. This continued for five days. Whilst the soldiers rested at night, the remaining victims were locked in empty garages. 33,771 were killed on the first two days. As many as 100,000 in all.

 

Two years later, while retreating over the same ground, the Germans decided to cover up any signs that this had ever happened. The bodies were dug up by hand, burnt, and all the evidence destroyed. But this wasn’t only of benefit to the Nazis. It had become well known that plenty of native Ukrainians had assisted in the monstrosity and, though whether they were forced to do it or whether they willingly collaborated will never really be known, there was certainly enough negative gossip around for it to be advantageous for many for the whole event to be kept quiet. And when the young poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko was taken to see the site twenty years later, the fact that there was no memorial on display horrified him almost as much as the atrocity itself. The nightmare at Babi Yar was unofficial, discussed only in whispers. For someone committed to fighting anti-Semitism wherever it was found, as well as exposing the horrors of the Soviet Union’s past, the absence of any commemoration was an injustice he felt compelled to rectify.

 

Yevtushenko was born in 1933 in Irkutsk to a family of Ukrainian exiles. He moved to Moscow as a boy and attended the Gorky Institute of Literature. In 1961 he produced the poem Babi Yar, attacking the Soviet indifference to the Nazi massacre. It was first read in public by its author but came under immediate attack from the authorities as it was Soviet policy to present the Holocaust as being perpetrated against Soviet citizens as a whole rather than any specific genocide of the Jews. Yevtushenko was criticised for belittling the suffering of the Russian people by suggesting that it was only Jews who were the victims of Babi Yar. No one had dared publish anything before that was so open about domestic anti-Semitism and the poem was not allowed to be officially published again until 1984.

 

In Testimony, the memoirs that many believe he dictated to Solomon Volkov, Dmitri Shostakovich explained his own views on anti-Semitism:

 

‘I often test a person by his attitude towards the Jews. In our day and age, any person with pretensions of decency cannot be anti-Semitic. The Jews are a symbol for me. All of man’s defencelessness is concentrated in them. After the war I tried to convey that feeling in my music. It was a bad time for Jews then. In fact it is always a bad time for them. We must never forget about the dangers of anti-Semitism and keep reminding others of it, because the infection is alive and who knows if it will ever disappear. That’s why I was overjoyed when I read Yevtushenko’s Babi Yar. The poem astounded me. They tried to destroy the memory of Babi Yar, first the Germans, and then the Ukranian government, but after Yevtushenko’s poem, it became clear that it would never be forgotten. That is the power of art. People knew about Babi Yar before the poem, but they were silent. But when they read the poem, the silence was broken.’ He decided instantly to set it to music. ‘I cannot not write it,’ he said to a friend.

 

The so called ‘thaw’ of the post-Stalin era was rapidly coming to an end. The publication in 1962 of Solzhenitsyn’s One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich had been personally allowed by Krushchev, but this led to publishers being flooded with texts about the oppression of the past and the authorities soon took fright, with the President wasting no time in starting to correct his over-hasty liberalisation. On 17th December writers and artists were summoned to the Kremlin to be given a dressing down. Krushchev attacked the decadence of modern art, ominously quoting the Russian proverb: ‘The grave cures the hunchback’. Yevtushenko replied that he thought it was ‘no longer the grave, but life’. Although the reception marked the end of the thaw, eleventh-hour attempts to stop the first performance of the Babi Yar symphony, scheduled for the following day, were fortunately thwarted by the bravery of the performers involved.

 

Mravinsky, the conductor of the première of most of Shostakovich’s previous symphonies, had declined to be involved with such a controversial work, and the composer never really forgave him for what he felt to be an act of cowardly betrayal. Instead Kirill Kondrashin was asked to conduct and, aware of an official desire for the concert not to happen, he decided to make sure that two bass singers were prepared for the solo role. His initial choice was probably not the ideal candidate. During rehearsals the singer, Victor Nechipailo, had asked Shostakovich why he was writing about anti-Semistism when there wasn’t any in the Soviet Union. ‘No! There is’, came the furious reply. ‘It is an outrageous thing and we must shout about it from the rooftops.’ It was not surprising that the singer got cold feet and didn’t show up for the final rehearsal, though the fact that he had been suddenly seconded into singing Don Carlos at the Bolshoi that night gave him the excuse he may well have been looking for. And so it was that Kondrashin’s safety net worked and his second choice, Vitali Gromadsky, sang the first performance.

 

As if this wasn’t quite enough stress for the conductor, Kondrashin was asked to take a phone call in the middle of the final rehearsal from Georgi Popov, the Russian Minister of Culture. He was asked if the symphony could be performed without its most politically sensitive first movement. No, said Kondrashin. Was there anything that might prevent the conductor from performing that night, continued the threatening questions. The courage of Kondrashin to say no to that too should not be underestimated with the benefit of hindsight.

 

The concert went ahead with the Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra in the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatoire. Nevertheless the planned live TV broadcast was cancelled and the entire square outside was cordoned off by police, who didn’t want the performance to be an opportunity for opposition demonstrations. The hall itself was packed, save for the significantly empty government box and, though the texts were unusually not printed in the programme book, the audience could understand every word and the first night reception was one of Shostakovich’s most triumphant of all. One line reported the event in the following day’s Pravda.

 

It must have been an extraordinary concert and it is very special for me that the leader and principal cellist on this recording (Valentine Zhuk and Dmitri Ferschtman) were, as young students, both present in the audience that night.

 

Shortly after the première, Yevtushenko slightly rewrote the poem, finally agreeing to the authorities’ demands to include some lines about the role of the Soviet people in the war and to make it clear that it was not only the Jews who suffered, but Russians and Ukrainians as well. Despite Shostakovich feeling profoundly let down by Yevtushenko’s aquiescence, some say that it was Kondrashin who asked Yevtushenko to ‘save’ the symphony by making the changes. The government had said that, unless text revisions were made, further performances would be banned, (or at least the work would be ‘not recommended for performance’, which amounted to the same thing) and, as the proposed changes were so slight, both conductor and poet felt that they were a small price to pay for the survival of the work as a whole. Shostakovich did eventually sanction the alterations and, without needing to change the music, incorporated them into the score, which was finally published in 1971. In this recording it is the original words that are sung.

 

What Shostakovich loved about texts was the opportunity to be very specific in what he wanted to express. ‘In recent years I’ve become more convinced that word is more effective than music. When I combine music with words, it becomes harder to misinterpret my intent.’ As if to maximise this communication, the word setting in the symphony is almost entirely syllabic. Its rhythms correspond as closely as possible to those of speech, with plenty of repeated notes and stepwise, conjunct motion. Only very occasionally does the range widen to heighten a particular moment, and the effect when this happens is devastating. This fundamental simplicity is similar to folk-song, and the often purely informative style of the singing makes the emotion all the more powerful. The chorus, singing almost entirely in unison, alternates from a Greek tragedy inspired universality to a very real, even at times operatic portrayal of vivid scenes.

 

Shostakovich originally only planned to set the Babi Yar poem but soon realised that it was in fact just the first movement of a much bigger piece. The four other Yevtushenko poems he chose to use for the rest of the symphony reveal a huge kaleidoscope of Russian events, emotions, and ideas. It is a shame in a way that the piece as a whole has become known as ‘Babi Yar’, for the work is about even more than that.

 

The second movement, Humour, expresses the traditional belief in the power of the buffoon to make tyrants tremble, and the inability of leaders to muzzle it. Court jesters are able to say what trusted advisers dare not mention, and the ability of laughter to bring inner strength to the downtrodden was something dear to Shostakovich’s heart. Though not a Jew, Shostakovich related to them as an oppressed and powerless people and it was the same connection he felt with the Russian women to whose strength, hard work, and dignity during the war he pays tribute with the third movement, In the Store. The fourth movement, Fears, is the only one whose text Yevtushenko wrote specifically for this piece. The fact that Shostakovich asked for something new suggests that the subject matter was something he didn’t want to leave out and it is with devastating irony that he precedes the opening line, ‘Fears are dying out in Russia’, with the most seriously terrifying music of the whole work. Between 1956 and 1965, nine out of every ten Russian synagogues were closed. It is not surprising that the initial optimism that followed the death of Stalin proved short-lived.

 

In the final movement, Shostakovich glorifies the many who sacrificed their careers by sticking to their beliefs. In turn he mocks those who sought to further themselves by giving in to the authorities. It is those who kept their integrity that we remember now, and people who sought success that we have long forgotten. At first Yevtushenko didn’t understand the music of the final pages. He had initially imagined something more heroic than the simple ‘harmony softly slushing around dead bodies’. But he later came to understand ‘the power of softness, the strength in fragility’ and realised that the fluttering butterflies of Shostakovich’s hauntingly ethereal closing bars had elevated his own texts to something far more than they could have been on their own. ‘After all the suffering you need a little sip of harmony. A little sip of something that is not connected with Stalin’s policies, something without Stalin’s suffering. Something which is about us. A sense of eternity.’

 

Babi Yar began life with Yevtushenko’s desire to commemorate the silent victims of the past. Memory was also a fundamental concept for Shostakovich. ‘The majority of my symphonies are tombstones. Too many of our people died and were buried in places unknown to anyone. I’m willing to write a composition for each of the victims, but that’s impossible and that’s why I dedicate my music to them all. The rarest and most valuable thing is memory. It has been trampled down for decades. How we treat the memory of others is how our memory will be treated.’

 

An official memorial at Babi Yar was not built until 1976. It did not mention that most of its victims were Jews. It took a further fifteen years before that injustice was finally rectified. As Shostakovich said: ‘Art destroys silence’.

 

© Mark Wigglesworth 2006

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Bernhard Klee (1936-2025): Discografía Selecta.

 

Tomado de Norman Lebrecht /Slippedisc

The Düsseldorfer Symphoniker has announced the death in Kreuzlingen of its 1980s music director Bernhard Klee. A formidably gifted musician, Klee held GMD posts with two other orchestras but he was best known as a guest conductor in world capitals, notably with the Vienna Philharmonic and as a vastly reliable collaborator in the record studios.

 

A fine pianist – he studied as a boy with the Leipzig cantor Gunter Ramin – he often accompanied leading singers, chief among them his wife, the Swiss soprano Edith Mathis. After their divorce, he married a Swiss psychologist.

RIP.

Norgard: Sinfonía Nr.6.

Per Nørgård

 SYMPHONY Nr. 6 ¨AT THE END OF THE DAY¨.  (1-3)

 TERRAINS VAGUES, FOR ORCHESTRA   (4-6)

 Danish National Symphony Orchestra.

 Dir: Thomas Dausgaard.

 (CHANDOS)

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Schumann - Grieg : Piano Concertos.

Edvard Grieg

PIANO CONCERTO Op. 16.   (1-3)

Robert Schumann

PIANO CONCERTO Op. 54   (4-6)

Claudio Arrau, Piano

Koninklijk Concertgebouworchester, Amsterdam.

Dir:  Christoph von Dohnányi.

(PHILIPS)

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       Grabación esencial de la tradicional dupla pianística Schumann-Grieg.

Brahms - Schumann: Violin Concertos.

Johannes Brahms

VIOLIN CONCERTO,Op. 77

Robert Schumann

VIOLIN CONCERTO D-moll, WoO. 23

Joshua Bell, Violin.

The Cleveland Orchestra

Dir: Christoph von Dohnányi.

(DECCA)

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       Comenzando un ciclo homenaje al arte del recién desaparecido maestro Christoph von Dohnányi. En ésta ocasión explorando su faceta como acompañante.  A mi juicio un muy notable Schumann, con un Brahms prescindible.

 

Shostakovich: El Año 1917.

Dimitri Shostakovich

SYMPHONY NR.12, Op.112, "The Year 1917"

Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra.

Dir: James DePreist.

(ONDINE)

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       Arribamos a la ¨12¨ en nuestra serie sinfónica Shostakovich. 

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     Shostakovich compuso su sinfonía Nr.12, subtitulada "El año de 1917", en 1961, dedicándola a la memoria Lenin, líder de la revolución bolchevique. La premiére de la obra tuvo lugar en octubre de ese mismo año, con la Filarmónica de Leningrado, dirigida por Yevgeny Mravinsky. Esta fue la última obra estrenada por este director, pues su posterior rechazo a estrenar la siguiente sinfonía, la Nr.13, causó una ruptura definitiva en la relación artística entre el compositor y el director.

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    La obra tiene más o menos el estilo y las miras de su predecesora, la Sinfonía Nr. 11, sólo que en más de un sentido para peor. Se han perdido la originalidad y el efecto cinematográfico de la anterior, dando paso al mero efecto propagandista. La misma está compuesta para orquesta de tamaño medio, tiene aproximadamente 40 minutos de duración y está estructurada en los cuatro movimientos convencionales de una sinfonía, con una concatenación inmediata entre los mismos y sin pausas, también a la manera de una obra programática. El motivo del programa son los eventos del año 1917 que condujeron a la revolución bolchevique. Los movimientos están subtitulados de la siguiente manera:

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1) Petrogrado revolucionario: Moderato — Allegro — Più mosso — Allegro

2) Razliv: Allegro (L'istesso tempo) — Adagio : el movimiento es alegórico al cuartel general de Lenin, en las afueras de Petrogrado.

3) Aurora: Adagio (L'istesso tempo) — Allegro: Aurora fue el buque que disparó contra el Palacio de Invierno zarista, iniciando la revolución rusa.

4) The Dawn of Humanity (despertar de la Humanidad): Allegro (L'istesso tempo) — Allegretto — Moderato : El movimiento final representa la vida soviética bajo la guía de Lenin, con aparentemente pretendido clima de júbilo y triunfalismo.

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    Aunque no sin razón por parte de la crítica, se considera a esta obra musicalmente la inferior de todas sus sinfonías, no deja de tener el sello propio del compositor ni carece de elementos musicales interesantes y de valor. Es probable que el compositor creara esta obra "políticamente correcta" para congraciarse temporalmente con el régimen de Khrushchev y preparar el terreno para el cataclismo que luego causaría su siguiente sinfonía, la 13, la "Babi Yar".

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    Como sería de esperar, la recepción del público a la obra no tuvo el mismo nivel de calidez desde el mismo momento de su estreno. La gente se preguntaría donde estaba el Shostakovich grande e irreverente creador de la 5ta, la 8va y la inolvidable 10ma en la que hizo un retrato descarnado de Stalin. Aunque bien recibida en la URSS, en Occidente el efecto fue diametralmente opuesto, y sin necesariamente ser un experto en música, el escucha percibía inmediatamente el tufillo oficialista y propagandístico de la obra, con su natural rechazo impostado.

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     Al ser una obra ¨problemática¨, no ha sido muy interpretada, y cuenta relativamente con pocas grabaciones, sólo de interés para los que han querido grabar el ciclo sinfónico completo. La grabación de referencia obvia sería alguna de las hechas por el mismo Mravinsky, sin embargo la mejor de ellas, hecha en 1984, siendo artísticamente extraordinaria, tiene el problema de las grabaciones en vivo de la era soviética, con ruido molesto del público y las cascadas de toses sencillamente intolerables. Habiendo presentado ya por acá hace algunos años la valiosa grabación de Ogan Durjan, me atrevo a sugerir la presente grabación de James DePreist hecha con la Filarmónica de Helsinki, grabación de gran interés, hecha en estudio y en un sonido espléndido. La acompaña una 9na también bien hecha. Ha sido un gran descubrimiento reciente.  Espero la disfruten.

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M-S. 

Christoph von Dohnányi: Discografía Selecta.