Word: melodiya
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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PROKOFIEV: IVAN THE TERRIBLE (Melodiya/ Angel). Prokofiev composed this music for Sergei Eisenstein's movie Ivan the Terrible in the early 1940s, but his means (oratorio-like) and aims (monumental) hardly allow it to be described as background music. Much of it is so impressive as to provide ammunition for those who predict that the best new music will be composed expressly to serve other arts. Yet the other arts can overwhelm-as sometimes in this case, when the narrator in Ivan (theatrically intoned in lyrical Russian by Aleksander Estrin) makes the work sound to non-Russian-speaking listeners...
TCHAIKOVSKY: VIOLIN CONCERTO IN D MAJOR (Melodiya-Angel). An extraordinary father-son act: David Oistrakh, 58, conducts the Moscow Philharmonic, while his son Igor, 35, fiddles. David, long considered one of the world's great violinists, now proves himself, after only five years on the podium, a conductor of major talent, while young Igor shows every indication of keeping the Oistrakh name in the annals of superior violinists. Together, they exploit every nuance in Tchaikovsky's eternally popular concerto, an exercise in wild conversation between the persistent, articulate voice of the violin and the rumbling, colorful orchestra...
SHOSTAKOVICH: KATERINA ISMAILOVA (3 LPs; Melodiya-Angel). This opera cost its composer considerable grief: shortly after he wrote it he was denounced by the Soviets for bourgeois intentions and vulgar execution. It is a brash work; at times openly satirical, at others tragically serious. The plot, based on Nikolai Leskov's story, Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk District, tells of a frustrated wife who eventually destroys the men around her. All the characters are thoroughly unsympathetic. The recording, part of Capitol's new import of Russian phonography, is disappointing. As the wife, Niconora Andreyeva has spirited dramatic presence...
SHOSTAKOVICH: THE EXECUTION OF STEPAN RAZIN and SYMPHONY NO. 9 (Melodiya-Angel). Razin was a 17th century Cossack rake who divided his energies between pillaging the Volga Valley and leading whole cities in uprisings against the Czar. When he was finally captured and executed, his severed head, so goes the legend, continued to shout defiance and inspired further rebellions. Evgeny Evtushenko has put the story in poetry, and Shostakovich here sets the theme to unabashedly patriotic music. Sung in stirring form by Bass Vitaly Gromadsky...
SHOSTAKOVICH: SYMPHONY NO. 5 (Melodiya-Angel). The Fifth is Shostakovich's best-known work, part of the repertory of most major orchestras. In the U.S. it has been associated with Leonard Bernstein, who helped to popularize it and who has made a stunningly dramatic recording. Kiril Kondrashin and the Moscow Philharmonic are more lyrical and reflective, so that the first and third movements have special eloquence-emotional search and intellectual despair...