Шостакович Дмитрий

This CD marks the second release of the Carducci’s Shostakovich 15 project, which includes performances of the complete cycles of the Shostakovich Quartets in cities including Washington DC, London, Oxford, Cardiff, Bogota and concerts throughout the UK to mark the 40th anniversary of the composer’s death. Described by The Strad as presenting “a masterclass in unanimity of musical purpose, in which severity could melt seamlessly into charm, and drama into geniality”, the Carducci Quartet is recognised as one of today’s most successful string quartets. This disc contrasts Shostakovich’s first two string quartets with the seventh – composed in memory of his late wife Nina. In composing his quartets prior to No. 7, Shostakovich had scrupulously followed a predetermined sequence of keys: according to this, the work should have been in E flat major. However Shostakovich, significantly, chose to break this pattern by writing his new quartet in F sharp minor, the key associated with such anguished music as Peter’s remorse in Bach’s St John Passion, and – particularly close to Shostakovich’s heart – Mahler’s unfinished Tenth Symphony.

Artist: Andris Nelsons/Boston Symphony Orchestra Label: Deutsche Grammophon

Artist: Seiji Ozawa Label: Deutsche Grammophon

Kirill Petrovich Kondrashin was born in Moscow on March 6, 1914, just before the fateful start of the First Word War. Little Kirill grew up in a musical family: his Jewish mother was a violinist from Riga, his father played the viola. The boy’s piano lessons began at an early age. We know little of the family’s fortunes in the period after the Bolshevik Revolution, but the teenage Kondrashin was able to study music theory with Nikolay Zhilyoyev (1881-1938).The Russian composer, musicologist and educator had learnt his trade from Mikhail Ippolitov-Ivanov (1859-1935) and Sergey Taneyev (1856-1915) and was a strong formative influence on his talented pupil. This is Kondrashin’s laconic summing-up of his “art of conducting”: 'Ultimately conducting is simply about making one’s own intentions intelligible to a hundred musicians and letting them play their part in them'. How much tragedy, drama, joy or fulfilment lay behind that aspiration was known only to Kirill Kondrashin himself.

[The Tsintsadze] is quite a discovery, Tsintsadze exerting impressive mastery of the orchestra and devising strongly defined thematic mastery throughout its five interlinked movements. Maximilian... — BBC Music Magazine, February 2019,

Дмитрий Шостакович — выдающийся композитор, пианист, дирижёр, педагог и общественный деятель. В своих сочинениях современными средствами инструментальной музыки воплощал сложный духовный мир художника-гуманиста ХХ века. На диск вошли: знаменитый Первый фортепианный концерт (1933); музыкальный памятник Великой Отечественной войне Седьмая «Ленинградская» симфония (1941); последняя Пятнадцатая симфония (1971), которая стала завершением большой работы по развитию симфонического жанра и объединила все лучшее, что было достигнуто композитором на различных этапах творчества

Yevgeny Alexandrovich Mravinsky was born according to the Julian calendar then in use in Russia on May 22, 1903 (June 4 according to the Gregorian calendar predominant in the West), the son of an aristocratic lawyer, in the city known then and now as Saint Petersburg. Two aunts played decisive roles in the life of Yevgeny Aleksandrovich Mravinsky. The son of an aristocratic lawyer was born in St Petersburg on May 22 (according to the Julian calendar of the Russian Orthodox church, though according to the western Gregorian calendar the date is June 4), 1903. One aunt was the celebrated soprano Yevgeniya Mravina, and the little Yevgeny probably learnt something about musical theatre from her. The other aunt was Aleksandra Kollontai, and she would prove extremely useful in enabling him to follow the profession he had chosen

The box comprises all (live) recordings made by Martha Argerich at the Lugano Festival, from 2002 to the last edition in 2016, and released by EMI Classics and Warner Classics. An impressive collection of 22CDs without equivalent. It includes a variety of genres: some solo piano music, lots of music for piano duo and among them many arrangements, chamber works and concertos.

Artist: Andris Nelsons/Boston Symphony Orchestra Label: Deutsche Grammophon

Formed in 1994 at the Royal College of Music in London, the Belcea Quartet has recorded the complete string quartets of Beethoven, Brahms, Bartók and Britten. For this new Alpha release it has chosen two works by one of the leading composers of twentieth-century chamber music, Dmitri Shostakovich. The Quartet no.3, of historic importance, was initially censured by the Soviet regime, then revised by Shostakovich for its first performance in 1946; the refined playing of the Belcea Quartet brings out all its contours. The Piano Quintet is among its composer’s most famous works and significantly contributed to his success on the international scene and with the Soviet authorities. The Belcea Quartet performs it in the company of the Polish pianist Piotr Anderszewski: the result is a musical encounter at the highest level of excellence.

Orchestra: The USSR State Academic Symphony Orchestra; Orchestra: The Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra; Composer: Rostislav Boiko; Composer: Alexander Kastalsky; Composer: Sergei Prokofiev; Composer: Sergei Rachmaninoff; Composer: Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov; Composer: Yuri Shaporin; Composer: Dmitri Shostakovich; Composer: Georgy Sviridov; Composer: Sergei Taneyev; Conductor: Evgeny Svetlanov; Artist: The USSR State Academic Symphony Orchestra; Artist: The Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra; Artist: The Grand Academic Choir of USSR Central Television and All-Union Radio; Artist: The Yurlov Russian State Academic Choir; Artist: The Sveshnikov State Academic Russian Choir; Artist: The Boys Choir Label: Melodia Records

There is a special quality to Russian Piano Concertos: apart from their jaw dropping virtuosity and orchestral brilliance they share that common Slavonic flavor, an undefinable mixture of melancholy and passion, whether smouldering or blazing. This set contains the famous concertos by Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff, Shostakovich and Prokofiev, but also lesser known composers: Anton Rubinstein, Medtner, Glazunov, Kabalevsky, Scriabin, Khatchaturian, Arensky, Balakirev, Lyapunov, Bortkiewicz and Khrennikov. Adding extra spice to the set are the concertos by Scharwenka and Moszkowski, Polish by birth but Slavic in spirit. Excellent performances by Michael Ponti, Boris Giltburg, Yevgeny Kissin, Stefan Doniga and others. Newly written liner notes are included in the booklet.

A Tribute to Herbert von Karajan (1908-89), mythical leader who championed 'serious' music on television and made a sensation by adding the 10th Symphony of Shostakovich to his repertoire recording it twice. Beethoven's 5th became, in its post-Napoleonic and then European context, the most played work in the world - today joined by Schubert's unfinished Symphony. The juxtaposition of these two 'proclamations' of uncontrollable energy is no longer a political or even aesthetic provocation, but brings together two worlds, one of freedom, courage and the almost military discipline taken over from Haydn, but also of fraternity announcing the 9th, hymn to the glory of humanity, the other, a film of tragic images, of despair, terror, violence, for only three minutes of triumph. Since its creation in 1953 by Mravinsky, this work has gradually also imposed its worrying universality

Artist: Shostakovich; Artist: Tabakov Label: Gega

A logical, albeit little performed combination of the first three symphonies by a highly gifted young Shostakovich, who went on to lend his astonishing orchestration talents to a host of avant-garde theatre and ballet productions and to the budding film industry. Although a true activist, he enjoyed the protection of a General and the CultureMinister (that is, until they were discretely eliminated). Here is an unexpected selection, in turn amusing or mainstream, but never vulgar.