Shostakovich: Symphony No. 1 in F minor, Op. 10, etc.

July 2006

****

“Vladimir Jurowski is… surely the most rounded Shostakovich interpreter to have emerged for many years, holding the balance between brooding song and headlong dance in perfect equilibrium.”

2010

“The Russian National Orchestra's relatively lean, frosty sonority, only partly a product of divided violins, is presented with outstanding fidelity in a spacious acoustic.
While both performances are excellent, the Sixth receives the more remarkable interpretation.
Here Shostakovich can be Beethovenian in his allocation of seemingly unworkable metronome marks and most conductors blunt his excesses. Leonard Bernstein, one of the few to give credence to the Largo's broad opening indication of quaver=72, makes the Scherzo into something ambivalent and dogged, a more 'logical' transition to the Presto finale than the composer seems to intend. Yevgeny Mravinsky, altogether brisker in that Scherzo, attempts to articulate its substance at dotted crochet=144 (the dot missing from my score can reasonably be inferred). Only this comes after a first movement incontrovertibly more fluid than quaver=72.
It's Jurowski who proves the most faithful, almost too dour as the argument gets underway, yet potently conveying the near-paralysis at its heart. The second movement is a fierce whirlwind outpacing even Mravinsky, a gambit that only occasionally sounds like a gabble. Perhaps there have been more exhilarating finales but this one has grace as well as the necessary vulgarity.
All in all a remarkable achievement.”

July 2006

“While both performances are excellent, the Sixth receives the more remarkable interpretation. The second movement is a fierce whirlwind outpacing even Mravinsky… Perhaps there have been more exhilarating finales but this one has grace as well as the necessary vulgarity. All in all a remarkable achievement.”