Shostakovich - Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk / Vishnevskaya, Gedda, Petrov, LPO, Rostropovich

Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com essential recording
Written between 1930 and 1932, The Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk was one of the most brilliant achievements of Shostakovich's long career. It was also the work that got him into trouble with Stalin. When the Soviet leader attended a performance in Moscow in 1936, almost two years after the opera's acclaimed Leningrad premiere, he personally ordered the publication of a scathing article in Pravda ("Muddle Instead of Music"), unleashing a ruthless campaign to reduce the arts in Soviet Russia to a state of dogmatic subservience to the regime. Lady Macbeth would disappear from the repertory for 30 years, and Shostakovich, despite his great gifts for opera, would focus his attention on symphonic and chamber music instead. But what an opera this one was! Notwithstanding its title, it has nothing to do with Shakespeare's Macbeth and quite a lot to do with Dostoevsky (even though it's based on a story by another 19th-century writer, Nikolai Laskov). The plot has all the elements of a Russian epic--boredom, need, irresistible sexual longing, infidelity, murder, suicide--and the music is vintage Shostakovich, swinging between farce and tragedy with astonishing sureness, magnificently intense, deeply absorbing, yet approachable. The opera's climactic scenes are driven by music of incredible power, and there are pages of haunting lyric beauty as well, such as Katarina's aria in scene 3, or the extraordinary music that begins the love scene between Katarina and Sergey--mysterious, edgy, sensuous, and vast. It's all brought home on this recording, a labor of love from two of the composer's closest friends and greatest champions. Vishnevskaya, the great exponent of the role of Katarina, sings with untrammeled splendor, while Rostropovich, the supreme interpreter of the music of Shostakovich in our time, conducts a characterful, white-hot performance by the London Philharmonic. --Ted Libbey

Shostakovich - Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk / Vishnevskaya, Gedda, Petrov, LPO, Rostropovich, Music, Dimitri Shostakovich, Mstislav Rostropovich, Galina Vishnevskaya, Nicolai Gedda, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Dimiter Petrov, Werner Krenn, Taru Valjakka, Birgit Finnilai, Alan Byers, Leslie Fyson, Edgar Fleet, Steven Emmerson, Classical, Classical Music, Opera, Opera / Operetta / Oratorio, Opera/Operetta, Russian 20th/21st Century Opera
Shostakovich - Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk / Vishnevskaya, Gedda, Petrov, LPO, Rostropovich
Average customer rating: 5 out of 5 stars
  • An unbelievable experience !
  • REMASTERED VERSION NOW AVAILABLE
  • What an opera! What power!!
  • A Magisterial Performance of a Masterpiece!
  • Right next to Pelleas and Wozzeck
 Shostakovich - Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk / Vishnevskaya, Gedda, Petrov, LPO, Rostropovich
Dimitri Shostakovich , Mstislav Rostropovich , Galina Vishnevskaya , Nicolai Gedda , London Philharmonic Orchestra , Dimiter Petrov , Werner Krenn , Taru Valjakka , Birgit Finnilai , Alan Byers , Leslie Fyson , Edgar Fleet , and Steven Emmerson
Manufacturer: Angel Records
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

Rostropovich, MstislavRostropovich, Mstislav | ( R ) | Featured Performers, A-Z | Classical | Styles | Music
London Philharmonic OrchestraLondon Philharmonic Orchestra | ( L ) | Featured Performers, A-Z | Classical | Styles | Music
GeneralGeneral | Classical | Styles | Music
All Works by ShostakovichAll Works by Shostakovich | Shostakovich, Dmitri | ( S ) | Featured Composers, A-Z | Classical | Styles | Music
GeneralGeneral | Opera & Vocal | Styles | Music
RussianRussian | Languages | Opera & Vocal | Styles | Music
OperettasOperettas | Opera & Vocal | Styles | Music
Vishnevskaya, GalinaVishnevskaya, Galina | Divas | Opera & Vocal | Styles | Music
Similar Items:
  1. Shostakovich: Cello Concerto No1, Op107; Violin Concerto No1 (revised), Op99
  2. Great Recordings Of The Century - Brahms: Violin Sonatas nos 1 - 3 / Perlman, Ashkenazy

ASIN: B000002RRI
Release Date: 1990-05-08

Tracks:

  1. Lady Macbeth Of Mtsensk: Akh, nye spitsa bol'she, poprobuyu (Act 1, Scene 1)
  2. Lady Macbeth Of Mtsensk: Gribki, sevodnya budut?
  3. Lady Macbeth Of Mtsensk: Govori!...Plotinu-to na...
  4. Lady Macbeth Of Mtsensk: Interlude (Orchestra)
  5. Lady Macbeth Of Mtsensk: Ay! Ay! Ay! Ay! Ay! Ay! Ay! (Act 1, Scene 2)
  6. Lady Macbeth Of Mtsensk: Mnogo vy, muzhiki
  7. Lady Macbeth Of Mtsensk: Interlude (Orchestra)
  8. Lady Macbeth Of Mtsensk: Spat' pora, Dyen proshol (Act 1, Scene 3)
  9. Lady Macbeth Of Mtsensk: Zherebyonok k kob'lke toropitsa
  10. Lady Macbeth Of Mtsensk: Kto eto, kto, kto stuchit?
  11. Lady Macbeth Of Mtsensk: Shto znachit starost' (Act 2, Scene 4)
  12. Lady Macbeth Of Mtsensk: Proshchay, Katya, proshchay!
  13. Lady Macbeth Of Mtsensk: Ustal...Prikazhete mnye postegat?
  14. Lady Macbeth Of Mtsensk: Vidno, skoro uzh zarya
  15. Lady Macbeth Of Mtsensk: Interlude (Orchestra)

Tracks:

  1. Lady Macbeth Of Mtsensk: Sergey, Seryozha! (Act 2, Scene 5)
  2. Lady Macbeth Of Mtsensk: Opyat usnul
  3. Lady Macbeth Of Mtsensk: Slushay, Sergey, Sergey!
  4. Lady Macbeth Of Mtsensk: Shto ty tut stoish? (Act 3, Scene 6)
  5. Lady Macbeth Of Mtsensk: Sozdan politseysky byl vo vremya ono (Act 3, Scene 7)
  6. Lady Macbeth Of Mtsensk: Interlude
  7. Lady Macbeth Of Mtsensk: Slava suprugam (Act 3, Scene 8)
  8. Lady Macbeth Of Mtsensk: Vyorsty odna za drugoy (Act 4, Scene 9)
  9. Lady Macbeth Of Mtsensk: Stepanych! Propusti menya
  10. Lady Macbeth Of Mtsensk: Nye lekhko posle pochota da poklonov
  11. Lady Macbeth Of Mtsensk: Moyo pochtyenye!
  12. Lady Macbeth Of Mtsensk: V lesu, v samoy chashche yest' ozero
  13. Act 4, Scene 9: Vstavay! Po mestam! Zhivo!

Amazon.com essential recording

Written between 1930 and 1932, The Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk was one of the most brilliant achievements of Shostakovich's long career. It was also the work that got him into trouble with Stalin. When the Soviet leader attended a performance in Moscow in 1936, almost two years after the opera's acclaimed Leningrad premiere, he personally ordered the publication of a scathing article in Pravda ("Muddle Instead of Music"), unleashing a ruthless campaign to reduce the arts in Soviet Russia to a state of dogmatic subservience to the regime. Lady Macbeth would disappear from the repertory for 30 years, and Shostakovich, despite his great gifts for opera, would focus his attention on symphonic and chamber music instead. But what an opera this one was! Notwithstanding its title, it has nothing to do with Shakespeare's Macbeth and quite a lot to do with Dostoevsky (even though it's based on a story by another 19th-century writer, Nikolai Laskov). The plot has all the elements of a Russian epic--boredom, need, irresistible sexual longing, infidelity, murder, suicide--and the music is vintage Shostakovich, swinging between farce and tragedy with astonishing sureness, magnificently intense, deeply absorbing, yet approachable. The opera's climactic scenes are driven by music of incredible power, and there are pages of haunting lyric beauty as well, such as Katarina's aria in scene 3, or the extraordinary music that begins the love scene between Katarina and Sergey--mysterious, edgy, sensuous, and vast. It's all brought home on this recording, a labor of love from two of the composer's closest friends and greatest champions. Vishnevskaya, the great exponent of the role of Katarina, sings with untrammeled splendor, while Rostropovich, the supreme interpreter of the music of Shostakovich in our time, conducts a characterful, white-hot performance by the London Philharmonic. --Ted Libbey

Customer Reviews:

5 out of 5 stars An unbelievable experience !.......2007-06-04

I would pick on all the superlatives thrown in by the other reviewers, all 6 of whom have given it a 5-star rating, and say it is also of my experience. I have sat with this CD every evening for the past 6 days (since getting it) still unable to absorb the rapturous beauty of the music of this great recording, one of the best of my more-than-100 operas on disk and tape.

My contribution to the newcomer to this music would be to see a DVD of the opera - there is indeed a disk with the soprano Galina Vishnevskaya as Katerina, the principal character, so that the story doesnt intrude too much into the appreciation of the overarching score. To my mind the music soars above the voices of Russia below. There are so many mind-blowing climaxes and the musical remains at all times lyrical. Buy it without a second thought!

5 out of 5 stars REMASTERED VERSION NOW AVAILABLE.......2003-07-14

EMI has remastered this enduring classic on its "Great Recordings of the Century" line, and it is available. Here's the ID number for finding it on Amazon, or just do a search for Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk:

B000063UM3

5 out of 5 stars What an opera! What power!!.......2001-03-26

As a relative newcomer to classical music I knew very little about Dmitri Shostakvich beyond his name, and even less about opera as such, when I learned about 'Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk' and determined that I had to have this recording of it, along with recordings of his Symphony No. 10 and his Symphony No. 5, at least. Of these I have von Karajan's and Jârvi's respectively. The former symphony was composed in the summer and fall of 1953, the year of Stalin's death, whose death on March 5, 1953, must have given Shostakovich much cause for celebration because symphony number 10 was and is said to contain a musical portrait of Stalin in the second movement. And, for all the world, this scherzo does appears to be that, really, especially since it is that violent and brutal, although the symphony concludes with considerable satisfaction and more happily because, in fact, Stalin, who had persecuted Shostakovich horribly, repeatedly, and prolongedly, for years, including as to this opera, was finally dead several months before Shostakovch began to compose this work. The latter, Symphony No. 5, was completed in 1937 and is a different matter entirely, in that it was called by a commentator "a Soviet artist's response to just criticism" (as to this opera) and concludes very differently. For anyone who still regards any of these works as "politically controversial", whatever that is supposed to mean, I personally have to add that, as I understand the foregoing remark AND Symphony No. 5, OF COURSE THE CRITICISM WASN'T JUST, COULD NOT POSSIBLY HAVE BEEN UNDERSTOOD TO BE JUST, NOR WAS IT REALLY ACCEPTED AS JUST BY THE COMPOSER (NOR SHOULD IT HAVE BEEN). By now, I have the Rostropovich recording of Symphony No. 8, too, which I also play regularly and often, on my CD player, which never fails me. All these recordings are available at this site and I recommend them along with this one of this opera. Others do better at dicussing it than I; I would just like to say that of course it's terrific. I am glad that this recording of this opera is available here, and that it has finally seen the light of day in this, its original form, so that we can all hear it. Highly recommended.

5 out of 5 stars A Magisterial Performance of a Masterpiece!.......2000-08-27

Without a doubt, this is one of the greatest opera recordings of the twentieth century! The opera itself, here restored to its original form -after metamorphosing into 'Katerina Izmailova', the original libretto (and score) hidden from the world for thirty years- is one of the masterful achievments of Shostakovich's life. Rostropovich has assured himself a high place in the pantheon of artists who have rendered incontestable service to mankind by this recording. Katerina's aria which opens the opera is a remarkable piece of theatre in and of itself, not to mention a perfect preamble of what is to come, and is radiantly sung by Vishnevskaya in full command of her extraordinary gifts, every nuance intact, her intimacy with the role apparent from the outset. The blood of this score is so entirely Russian, and so clearly purchased with that particular life-sacrificing art peculiar to the Russian humanist aesthetic, that its musical language reveals itself straightaway as an organic part of the glorious continuum of Russian art, one of the reasons of course that Stalin chose it to forge his hammer against everything truly Russian. The political history of this work of art, fascinating though it is, yet remains an ignoble and indeed unimportant footnote beside the lasting triumph of this particular opera. Nicolai Gedda here demonstrates why he is a legendary tenor- Sergey's grief, and what remains of his inner life are wrought like gold at every turn; it is a performance of towering artistry and unparalleled beauty. The London Symphony is shocking in its perfection, heated by Rostropovich's mystical gifts and pouring itself out like a Russian lover. Others more learned and capable than I have written far more lucidly than I could hope to in praise of this eternal work of art, yet I wish to call out the majesty of this masterpiece, encourage others to purchase it, make it their own, and thereby give homage to a genuinely rare human experience bequeathed to the world by Shostakovich, here restored to its preeminent place by the irreplaceable artists and collaborators who have understood what this work means to humankind, especially in an age of unbelief.

5 out of 5 stars Right next to Pelleas and Wozzeck.......2000-05-14

These three great operas form the pinnacle of acheivement on the musical stage in the 20th Century.

In a word- this music is astonishing. The reocrding- amazing. The conducting- inspired. Probably it is Rostropovich's supreme accomplishment on record. Even the London Philharmonic Orchestra is full of life, vibrant, with horns blasting and strings digging into the music with the Mahler-like intesity found in their recordings with Tennstedt. Gedda moreover, displays the incredible range of his tenor voice- from gravely and bass (on par with Dmitri Petrov) to heady and youthful, his voice never flags, his conviction never in question.

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