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

“Salonen’s forces throw themselves into the affray with plenty of pep. Ryan McKinny acquits himself well as the Entertainer, master of ceremonies at a big Soviet rally...the [Symphony] cackles and grimaces with more vigour than Orango...there’s a bright heat and clarity here” The Times, 29th June 2012 ***

“the piano score of the prologue to Shostakovich's abandoned opera Orango blazes with colour in Gerard McBurney's orchestration.” The Independent, 1st July 2012 ****

“Even if some of the music [of Orango] sounds thin in this Gerard McBurney orchestration, Esa-Pekka Salonen’s LA forces give it five-star treatment — the rising American tenor Michael Fabiano is outstanding — and it serves as an agreeable bonne bouche to Salonen’s stupendous account of the bewildering Fourth” Sunday Times, 9th July 2012

“[Orango's] trenchant wit and seriousness of satirical purpose leave you wishing more of it had survived...Salonen conducts [the Fourth] with cool lucidity and a sense of remorseless logic...The immense climax of the finale isn't as shattering as it could be, but elsewhere Salonen's fondness for clear textures is very much in evidence, and often admirable.” The Guardian, 12th July 2012 ****

“The Prologue makes a curious yet first-rate companion to the mighty Shostakovich Four. Salonen's approach to this half-human, half-monster Symphony is well-calculated...the LA recording adds much to our understanding of an extraordinarily complex giant.” BBC Music Magazine, October 2012 ****

“[The Prologue] comes rip-roaringly off the surviving piano score in Gerard McBurney's spookily authentic orchestration...It's a composerly account [of the Fourth] in which every thematic connection, however oblique, has something to say. Clarity is forensic, with the Los Angeles Philharmonic achieving levels of precision that can...totally suspend disbelief.” Gramophone Magazine, October 2012

“McKinny is a Master of Ceremonies of tangible malevolence...Salonen gets a lively response from his choral and orchestral forces, pointing up the music's humour to the audible enjoyment of the audience...this occasion may well be the first time [Salonen] has tackled one of the symphonies. The Fourth is the right choice in that its combining wilfully disparate material with an essentially pluarlistic idiom plays to this conductor's interpretative strengths.” International Record Review, September 2012

“does the prologue work as a stand-alone piece? Emphatically, yes...This is vintage Shostakovich, big, bold and biting, the fine soloists and chorus believably balanced...McBurney and Salonen exercise good judgment with this intriguing score..Worth it for Orango alone; look elsewhere for the symphony.” MusicWeb International, June 2012

“One of the peaks of Barshai's masterly Shostakovich cycle from Cologne, taxing the recording to the limit in the driving climaxes of the composer's most blistering and unorthodox symphony.” BBC Music Magazine, December 2012 ****

“…trombone and trumpet solos, throwing careful intonation to the winds, achieve even more rasping emphasis than their Moscow counterparts in the 1962 recording. Unique, though, are the staggering dynamic range, focus and atmosphere of the Dresden Staatskapelle's string playing. Kondrashin, like Mravinsky, was famous for his intensive pianissimos and the gradations of his crescendos and this is perhaps the finest testament to them, especially in the twilight zones of the imploding first movement, the shadow-world of the finale's off-kilter ballet divertissement and the tragic snuffing-out of the relentless C minor coda.” BBC Music Magazine, November 2006 *****

“This could just be the most important Western recording of the Fourth since the long-deleted Ormandy and Previn versions. Naturally, it complements rather than replaces Kondrashin's reading (Chant du Monde), taped shortly after the work's belated unveiling in December 1961: papery strings and lurid brass can't disguise that conductor's unique authority even when Shostakovich's colouristic effects are muted by rudimentary Soviet sound engineering. In his recording, Rattle's approach is more obviously calculated, supremely brilliant but just a little cold. A certain firmness and self-confidence is obvious from the first. The restrained Hindemithian episode is relatively square, the first climax superbly built. The second group unfolds seamlessly with the glorious espressivo of the strings not much threatened by the not very mysterious intrusions of harp and bass clarinet.
Tension builds again, some way into the development, with the lacerating intensity of the strings' moto perpetuo fugato passage.
Six miraculously terraced discords herald the two-faced recapitulation. Kondrashin and Järvi (Chandos) find more emotional inevitability in Shostakovich's destabilising tactics hereabouts.
Rattle doesn't quite locate a compensating irony, although his closing bars are convincingly icy, with nicely audible gong. Even in Rattle's experienced hands, the finale isn't all plain sailing. The initial quasi-Mahlerian march is underpinned by disappointingly fuzzy timpani strokes which lose the point of their own lopsidedness. But then the section's mock-solemn climax is simply tremendous (and tremendously loud). The incisive Allegro is launched with (deliberate?) abruptness at an unbelievably fast tempo and, even if the music doesn't always make sense at this pace, the results are breathtaking. The denouement is approached with real flair. A superbly characterised trombone solo, hushed expectant strings and the most ambiguous of all Shostakovich perorations is unleashed with devastating force. The coda is mightily impressive too.
After this, the Britten encore risks seeming beside the point; this really is emotional play-acting.
Neither Kondrashin's nor Järvi's more direct emotional involvement is easily passed over. On the other hand, Rattle does give us a thrilling example of what a relatively objective, thoroughly 'modern' approach has to offer today. With its huge dynamic range and uncompromising, analytical style, EMI's recording pulls no punches, and the awesome precision of the CBSO's playing makes for an unforgettable experience.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010

“While the interpretation as such is not startlingly original, the tempi mainstream, Raiskin obtains a freshness of texture that's undeniably appealing, evidence of thorough preparation and intense commitment. Best of all, the temptation to rush or otherwise undersell the finale's titanic final climax is firmly resisted....A valid, sometimes unexpectedly emotive alternative to the heftier sonorities of Gergiev and Co.” Gramophone Magazine, March 2012

“No elbow jabs, no foaming at the mouth, but an inexorable procession of nightmare, grim jest and desolation, brilliantly played by the Netherlands Radio Symphony Orchestra.” The Times, 18th July 2009 ****

“Everything is humanised, so that the conflict of the Finale is a whirlwind battle rather than a grinding mechanism, and even the circus ditties before the final storm have charm as well as nuance. The end is as mesmerising as it can be, raising unmistakeable parallels with the fading heartbeat of Tchaikovsky's Pathétique.” BBC Music Magazine, October 2009 *****

“a performance of the Fourth that makes a terrific impact” The Telegraph

“With Haitink in charge of the Shostakovich, there can be no threat of exaggeration or distortion, no need to whip up a greater frenzy than the composer plotted. No conductor can make this long symphony short but this conductor keeps the lines taut and the climaxes proportional. This conductor makes the macabre spasms sharp, the sombre indulgences poetic… the final unearthly cadence was greeted with a small eternity of stunned silence. It meant more than any push-button ovation.” Financial Times

“In a DVD accompanying Bernard Haitink's musically satisfying account of Shostakovich's Fourth Symphony, creative director and narrator Gerard McBurney and actor Nicholas Rudall compellingly spin out its greater Soviet and Stalinist context. Haitink's ken for large-scale tension leads to commanding, crunchy climaxes... With haunting passages by the woodwinds, especially clarinets, the angst and dread at the core of this... symphony come through.” Gramophone Magazine, November 2008

“account of the Fourth is masterly, underlining the work's claims to be Shostakovich's finest, the one in which his debt to Mahler is most vividly declared. It helps to have an orchestra as secure and rich-toned as the Chicago Symphony in music whose vivid colours and almost expressionist intensity are so important; Haitink ensures that the symphonic skeleton is boldly defined too.” The Guardian, 22nd August 2008 ****

“This recording demonstrates the orchestra's keen response to the music's darker moments of rumination, its rhythmic and harmonic pungency and, through razor-sharp incisiveness of attack, its modernist leanings.” The Telegraph, 23rd August 2008