Shostakovich: Symphony No. 4 & Symphony No. 11

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I’d put this Fourth at the top of my pile for sheer belligerence and daring...this is a must-hear album and no mistake – and the Fourth is as good as it gets. — Gramophone Magazine, November 2022

Release Date: 23rd Sep 2022
Catalogue No: ICAC5169
Label: ica classics
Length: 2 hours 5 minutes

Gramophone Magazine

November 2022

Reissue/Archive Issue of the Month

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Shostakovich: Symphony No. 4 in C minor, Op. 43

Work length1:01:57

Album only

BBC Symphony Orchestra
Gennady Rozhdestvensky

I. Allegretto poco moderato

Track length26:29

Album only

II. Moderato con moto

Track length8:56

$1.50

$2.30

III. Largo - Allegro

Track length26:32

Album only

Shostakovich: Symphony No. 11 in G minor, Op. 103 'The year 1905'

Work length1:03:48

Album only

BBC Philharmonic
Gennady Rozhdestvensky

I. Palace Square. Adagio

Track length17:03

Album only

II. The 9th of January. Allegro

Track length22:10

Album only

III. Eternal Memory. Adagio

Track length9:00

$1.50

$2.30

IV. The Tocsin. Allegro non troppo

Track length15:35

Album only

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Gennady Rozhdestvensky (1931-2018) was one of Russia’s greatest conductors along with Evgeny Mravinsky and Kirill Kondrashin. His close personal and musical relationship with Shostakovich began in the 1950s and continued until the composer’s death in 1975. Rozhdestvensky said at the time, ‘It would be difficult to overestimate the significance of my relations with Dmitri Shostakovich since he opened before me a musical universe like a gigantic magnifying glass reflecting our fragile world’. Rozhdestvensky conducted the first western premiere of Shostakovich’s Symphony No.4 in Edinburgh in 1962 and after many subsequent performances internationally, it was also the inaugural piece in his tenure as chief conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra (1979-81). Composed in 1936 but condemned by the Soviet authorities, it did not receive its first performance until 1961 in Moscow. The epic Symphony No.11, given a dramatic performance by the BBC Philharmonic in 1997, is based on revolutionary folksongs relating to the 1905 Russian Revolution, and received the Lenin Prize in 1958. Despite this, questions arose as to whether Shostakovich was denouncing the Soviet regime’s brutal treatment of its opponents in it, specifically the 1956 invasion of Hungary or the Tsarist tyranny and oppression of 1905, to which there are no conclusive answers.

· Supremely authoritative performances from Rozhdestvensky who was closely associated with the composer and his works

· Rozhdestvensky gave the first western premiere of Symphony No.4 · Both symphonies benefit from the additional atmosphere and excitement generated by being caught ‘live’

· A wide soundstage coupled with powerful and immediate stereo recordings

· Highly informative notes from Harlow Robinson, an authority on Russian and Soviet music

Reviews

November 2022

I’d put this Fourth at the top of my pile for sheer belligerence and daring...this is a must-hear album and no mistake – and the Fourth is as good as it gets.

Shostakovich: Symphony No. 4 & Symphony No. 11

2 CDs

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