Word: mahlerian
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...official scorn in Russia; Shostakovich meekly labeled his next symphony "A Soviet Artist's Reply to Just Criticism." Now, in its first American recording, the Fourth is worth hearing mainly to find out what all the fuss was about. Whatever its polemic content may be, it sounds clumsily Mahlerian and full of papier-maché grandeur...
...when a moving passage did come, it was intoxicating. Most memorable of all were the closing bars of Ich bin der Welt abhaden gekommen where Miss Forrester leapt a tenth with suppressed intensity, then faded out as a typically Mahlerian falling cello line, blending with the oboe high above, came to rest in a hushed cadence. Blicke mir nicht in die Lieder! was most consistently well performed here with precision and urgency; on the other hand, Um Mitternacht did not find even Miss Forrester compellingly moving until its dramatic ending. In any case, the results well justified their ambitiousness. Hats...
...original tape had no contrasts. I felt that the piece was static and monotonous because it lacked 'events'--that is, a sequences of random happenings that would give a sense of succession of ideas or moods. At its worst, Maxfield's music has an over-blown, almost Mahlerian grandiloquence...