Shostakovich: Symphony No. 4 in C minor, Op. 43 - download (MP3 & FLAC)

“…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 *****

“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

“A genuine BBC Legend this. We tend to think of Kyrill Kondrashin as the most 'authentic' pioneer of Shostakovich's long-suppressed Fourth Symphony, except that the recordings of this work by Gennady Rozhdestvensky are no less fine. Where Kondrashin offers total commitment and unremitting intensity, Rozhdestvensky proves peculiarly adept at teasing out the score's strange, subversive elements.
Here, giving the work its first hearing outside the Soviet bloc during a large-scale Shostakovich retrospective at the 1962 Edinburgh Festival, Rozhdestvensky conducts with greater urgency than usual, galvanising the Philharmonia into a coruscating display. Small wonder the piece so wowed contemporary critics. The inclusion of an edited and reordered KaterinaIzmaylova Suite, performed a few days earlier, reminds us that this was also the period in which Shostakovich at last secured official acceptance of his opera The Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, albeit in bowdlerised form. Western commentators were understandably less kind about the Twelfth Symphony which featured on the same programme.
BBC Legends' festive filler is an LSO relay from 1985, dangerously like a non sequitur in this context. It also betrays a more worrying aspect of the Rozhdestvensky phenomenon.
While the rendition has more than enough verve and spirit to delight the audience at London's Barbican Hall, you may find it too sloppy for repeated listening. (Applause is retained.)” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010

“A genuine BBC Legend this…Rozhdestvensky proves peculiarly adept at teasing out the score’s strange, subversive elements…galvanizing the Philharmonia into a coruscating display. Small wonder the piece so wowed contemporary critics.” Gramophone Magazine

“Especially fine.” Classic CD