Word: shostakovich
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...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...
...problems of any amateur dance production. The dancers are a little unsure on their feet, and as they finish steps, they jerk to regain their balance. This flaw in technique is especially obvious in Eric Lessinger's "Moment Mechanique"--itself an unoriginal interpretation of Shostakovich's metallic music. The three dancers click about the stage doll-like in a dance that should be tight and disturbing but is simply dull...
...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...
...rehearsals, chatted with visitors in three languages, and finally paraded ecstatically through congratulatory mobs in Spoleto's town square on the night of his birthday. Musically, the program equaled anything that Bell was ever able to do in the studio, with Sviatoslav Richter as the pianist in the Shostakovich Quintet and Zubin Mehta conducting the Verdi Requiem and a stunning new production of Debussy's Pelleas et Melisande...