Shostakovich: Hamlet [Hybrid SACD] [SACD]

Editorial Reviews
Album Description
Naxos announces the new Film Music Classics series, whose inaugural release is the first ever complete recording of Shostakovich’s film music to Hamlet. Written in the early 1960s for Kozintsev’s film, Shostakovich’s music for Hamlet is generally considered to be his best film score, with an absolute clarity of vision and containing some of his most intense music. The film won several film festival prizes, while the score was used for a number of ballets based on Hamlet. The eight-part suite compiled by Shostakovich’s friend Lev Atovmian in 1964 is the usual guise of Shostakovich’s music. However, for this unique recording the suite has been integrated with the original complete published score, which includes music not used in the final cut of the film. SACD: Compatible with existing CD players, this SACD contains three separate versions of the same program: 5.1 multichannel surround sound mastered in DSD • 2-channel stereo mastered in DSD • CD standard stereo

Tracks:

Overture (Suite, No. 1)
Military Music
Fanfares
The Palace Ball (Suite, No. 2)
Story Of Horatio And The Ghost
The Ball
The Ghost (Suite, No. 3)
Hamlet's Parting From Ophelia
Palace Music
Arrival Of The Players (Suite, No. 6)
Monologue (What A Rogue And Peasant Slave)
Hamlet's Monologue (To Be Or Not To Be)
Royal Fanfare
In The Garden (Suite, No. 4)
Booth Fanfare
Poisoning Scene (Suite, No. 5)
The Flutes Play
Ophelia's Descent Into Madness (Song Of Ophelia)
Ophelia's Insanity
Death Of Ophelia (Suite, No. 7)
Hamlet At Ophelia's Grave
The Cemetery
The Duel/The Death Of Hamlet/Hamlet's Funeral (Suite, No. 8)

Album Description

Naxos announces the new Film Music Classics series, whose inaugural release is the first ever complete recording of Shostakovich's film music to Hamlet. Written in the early 1960s for Kozintsev's film, Shostakovich's music for Hamlet is generally considered to be his best film score, with an absolute clarity of vision and containing some of his most intense music. The film won several film festival prizes, while the score was used for a number of ballets based on Hamlet. The eight-part suite compiled by Shostakovich's friend Lev Atovmian in 1964 is the usual guise of Shostakovich's music. However, for this unique recording the suite has been integrated with the original complete published score, which includes music not used in the final cut of the film.

Customer Reviews:

Some of Shostakovich's Most Profoundly Moving Music.......2006-05-14

There was a time when the public looked down on classical music composers who deigned to stoop to writing film scores, and yet many of the finest composers of the 20th century were quite successful in producing quality music for the cinematic medium: Korngold, Prokofiev, Stravinsky, Copland and Shostakovich to name but a few. When Shostokovich wrote this deeply profound and moody score for the 1963 Russian film 'Gamlet' he was in top form and the music that is brought to us in its entirety on this lengthy recording (59 minutes) by Dmitry Yablonsky conducting the Russian Philharmonic in a eight day recording session in Moscow in February 2003 offers some refreshing insights into the power of Shostakovich's compositional techniques.

From the sinister Overture, through military music and fanfares and palace balls, Shostakovich leads us into the mysteries that abound in Shakespeare's drama. The episodes of meeting the ghost, the inordinately appealing subtle music that accompanies Hamlet's famous monologues to the madness and death of Ophelia and the eventual death of Hamlet - all are orchestrated with such brilliance that the music sounds like a fresh introduction to Shostakovich. For example, he uses the harpsichord for Ophelia, allowing that odd keyboard sound to dwindle into insanity in a manner that sets this character apart from the rest of Shostakovich's musical style.

For those who love the symphonies and quartets of Dmitri Shostokovich this magnificently recorded CD should become a part of the library. It is not a minor work: it is some of this great composer's most personal writing. Highly Recommended. Grady Harp, May 06

Shostakovich As a Great Film Music Composer.......2004-06-25

By my title I don't necessarily mean the FILM is great (I've not seen it) but the music certainly is. As far as I know we've not had the complete film score on CD before; there have been several recordings (conducted by Chailly and Previn, among others) of a suite from the score. This one does not have to take a back seat to any recording I've ever heard of the suite. And it contains music that we'd not otherwise hear, some of it extraordinarily evocative. More and more, with some recent widely distributed recordings, we are coming to know Shostakovich as a masterful film composer. Look for CDs of his music for 'The Great Citizen,' 'Pirogov,' 'The Gadfly, 'The New Babylon,' among others. Just as we remember Prokofiev for his ballet scores, we may come to remember Shostakovich just as much for his film music. And these are not the typical Hollywood-style scores; they don't sound so much like movie music as descriptive tone poems.

Dmitry Yablonsky conducts the Russian Philharmonic Orchestra, a group that has been coming on strong in recent times; Yablonsky is their Principal Conductor and he certainly gets all one could ask for from them. The playing is alert and flexible, musical and suave, spooky and exciting. In the spooky passages (and there are some moments of real frisson in the scene with Hamlet's Father's ghost) I was actually made to feel eerily unsettled.

Some highlights of the score: The Ghost, The Ball, Arrival of the Players, Monologue ('What a rogue and peasant slave'), Monologue ('To be or not to be'), In the Garden, Death of Ophelia, and 'The Duel - Death of Hamlet - Hamlet's Funeral.' The latter is an emotionally evocative 7-minute tone poem that could stand on its own.

This CD also has a release on SACD which I have not heard. But on this plain vanilla CD the sound is demonstration quality, so I can only imagine what it must be like with surround sound.

Recommended.

TT=62:28

Tracks:

Carmen Ballet: Introduction
Carmen Ballet: Dance
Carmen Ballet: First Intermezzo
Carmen Ballet: Change Of The Guard
Carmen Ballet: Entrance Of Carmen And Habanera
Carmen Ballet: Scene
Carmen Ballet: Second Intermezzo
Carmen Ballet: Bolero
Carmen Ballet: Toreador
Carmen Ballet: Toreador And Carmen
Carmen Ballet: Adagio
Carmen Ballet: The Fortune Teller
Carmen Ballet: Finale
Incidental Music To 'Hamlet': Introduction And Night Watch
Incidental Music To 'Hamlet': Funeral March
Incidental Music To 'Hamlet': Flourish And Dance Music
Incidental Music To 'Hamlet': Hunting
Incidental Music To 'Hamlet': Actor's Pantomime
Incidental Music To 'Hamlet': Procession
Incidental Music To 'Hamlet': Musical Pantomime
Incidental Music To 'Hamlet': Feast
Incidental Music To 'Hamlet': Ophelia's Song
Incidental Music To 'Hamlet': Lullaby
Incidental Music To 'Hamlet': Requiem
Incidental Music To 'Hamlet': Tournament
Incidental Music To 'Hamlet': March Of Fortinbras
Carnaval Overture, Op. 45

Customer Reviews:

splendid percussion and remarkable Carmen.......2001-03-06

Arthur Fiedler's recording of Shchedrin's Carmen Ballet is excellent in every way. The composer's imaginative rescoring of several sections of Bizet's opera for strings and percussion is a superb reorchestration exploiting a full range of percussion timbre that reveals an incredible array of views of the score that continually delight the listener. The Ballet, composed as a vehicle for his celebrated wife- prima ballerina of the Bolshoi Ballet, Maya Plisetskaya - is an extraordinary orchestration which invites the listener to explore new and very different colors with music originally scored for Bizet's classically constituted orchestra of the opera pit. While the disk also includes the Incidental Music to "Hamlet" by Shostakovich and Glazunov's Carnival Overture, it's the Shchedrin performance that makes the disk worth any price for the listener who values discovering new things in music well known in an earlier guise.

Snap, Crackle, Pop!.......2000-03-01

If you haven't ordered a High Performance CD, you're really missing out. This particular release for me falls below some of the others. But it's still fun. The main work, the ballet music based on "Carmen," is quite unusual. All of the familiar themes are there, but with a lot of bombastic percussive inflictions. There's some tinkering with some of the themes, and where you expect to hear them, but it's all part of the surprise of the recording. This is a fun CD for driving down the highway. There are a lot of bells and whistles, all in the Fiedlerian tradition. If that's what you like, you shant be disappointed. I also recommend the recording of "The Rite of Spring" (with Seiji Ozawa), and the Mahler CD. Each are part of the High Performance series and are very thrilling. There's also a High Performance recording with Eugene Ormandy and his Philadelphia Orchestra which, for me, sounds more like a run through than a high performance.

Shostakovich: Symphony No. 5; Music from the Film "Hamlet"

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Shostakovich: Symphony No. 5; Music from the Film "Hamlet"

Manufacturer: RCA
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Binding: Audio CD

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Music from Great Shakespeare Films

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Tracks:

Hamlet - Introduction
Hamlet - Ball At The Palace
Hamlet - The Ghost
Hamlet - Scene Of The Poisoning
Hamlet - The Arrival & Scene Of The Players
Hamlet - The Duel & Death Of Hamlet
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Julius Caesar - The Ides Of March
Julius Caesar - Caesar's Ghost
Julius Caesar - Approach Of Octavian's Army & Death Of Brutus

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recording of ligfhter music by Shos the heavy composer
yep, i'd agree
A Unique Collection of Works
Track 25 is the best

Shostakovich: The Film Album

Manufacturer: Decca
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

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ASIN: B00000I08B
Release Date: 1999-02-09

Tracks:

The Counterplan, op. 33: Presto
The Counterplan, op. 33: Andante
The Counterplan, op. 33: The Song Of The Counterplan
Alone, Op.26: March. The Street
Alone, Op. 26: Galop
Alone, Op.26: Barrel Organ
Alone, Op.26: March
Alone, Op.26: Altai
Alone, Op.26: In Kuzmina's Hut
Alone, Op.26: School Children
Alone, Op.26: Storm Scene: Storm Breaks
Alone, Op.26: Storm Scene: Snow Storm
Alone, Op.26: Storm Scene: Calm After The Storm
The Tale Of The Silly Little Mouse, Op. 56: The Tale Of The Silly Little Mouse
Hamlet, Op.116: Introduction
Hamlet, Op.116: Palace Music
Hamlet, Op.116: Ball At The Castle
Hamlet, Op.116: Ball
Hamlet, Op.116: In The Garden
Hamlet, Op.116: Military Music
Hamlet, Op.116: Scene Of The Poisoning
The Great Citizen, Op.55: Funeral March
Sofia Perovskaya, Op.132: Waltz
Pirogov, Op.76A: Scherzo
The Gadfly, Op.97: Romance
Pirogov, Op.76A: Finale

Amazon.com essential recording

Continuing Riccardo Chailly's topical Shostakovich recordings (he's already visited the composer's jazz-inflected and dance pieces), this collection of music for film offers the series greater heft. The music here is as entangled in politics and pop culture as the jazzy and dancy material, but here the emotions are more complex and the execution more exciting.

The films Shostakovich was scoring somehow sought legitimacy or outright approval from Soviet power regimes, but as in all his music, Shostakovich enacted subtle subversions. The parade-step march cadences of The Counterplan are exaggerated just enough to integrate all kinds of conflicting dark undertows, emphasized coyly by Chailly and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra. The excerpts from Alone are all over the map, spooky and turbulent and bleak in equal measures, in answer to so many mandated bright, blasting musical ventures elsewhere in the Soviet cultural regime. The works continue until 1967, with a twisty waltz from Sofia Perovskaya, which seems more like a distant comment on the notion of a dance piece than music scripted for dance. For its mix of big, lit sweeps and minute, shadowy motions, this is one of the best single-CD Shostakovich sets--themed or not--in print. --Andrew Bartlett

Customer Reviews:

recording of ligfhter music by Shos the heavy composer .......2005-11-24

This recording is excellent. The works are rather light so one does not notice at first that the recording is that good. After some listebning I notice and i Am sure you will do too. Pirogorov and Sofia Petrovskaja i like best. Great recording.

yep, i'd agree.......2004-12-29

This is the perfect album for anyone who believes Shostakovich was only capable of writing music that expressed his inner turmoil.
Here is an album of the composer just doing his job (writing soundtracks for propaganda films) and showing he's capable of playing the field like a consummate pro.
Many of the melodies may sound vaguely familiar, and it's no wonder; they were often pilfered by other assembly line arrangers for Hollywood musicals and other upbeat entertainment.
I'd have to agree with the previous reviewer, who thinks track 25 is the best. It's the Romance from "The Gadfly", which is arguably Shostakovich's greatest melody, played here with perfection; the "lazy" pizzicato and slightly staggered fourth beat in the measure is something I haven't heard before on this piece, and it works very nicely for these ears.

A Unique Collection of Works.......2000-11-25

The film scores of Dmitri Shostakovich are certainly not his best works, but they are definetly worth a look. There is a great range of music on this CD, from the joyful 'Tale of the Silly Little Mouse' to the harshness of 'Hamlet', and Chailly and his players give solid performances throughout. I wouldn't really recommend this as an introduction to Shostakovich's works, but if you're a fan, then it would make a great addition to your collection.

Track 25 is the best.......1999-06-17

Shostakivich wrote some 'heavy' music, but in his better moments he wrote some beautiful melodies (e.g. The Jazz Suite) and film themes including The Tale of the silly little mouse'. What a pity that you have to wait until track 25 for the best piece - the Romance from the 'Gadfly' (Theme music from the BBC series 'Reilly, ace of spies'). The definitive recording of this piece was the version by the USSR Cinema Symphony Orchestra, with Khatchaturian conducting, but the version on this recording is also excellent.

Shostakovich: Symphony No 14, etc / Varady, Fischer-Dieskau, Wenkel; Haitink

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A Richly Nuanced Performance of Shostakovich's Symphony of Death
Please note: This isn't in Russian
Shostakovich And Matters Of Death
Utterly spiritual!
Surprisingly, Perhaps, a Dimly-Burning Wick of Hope

Shostakovich: Symphony No 14, etc / Varady, Fischer-Dieskau, Wenkel; Haitink
Dmitri Shostakovich , Bernard Haitink , Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau , Julia Varady , Concertgebouw Orchestra Amsterdam , and Ortrun Wenkel
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ASIN: B00000IP3J
Release Date: 2000-08-08

Tracks:

Symphony No.14, Op.135: De profundis
Symphony No.14, Op.135: Malaguena
Symphony No.14, Op.135: Loreley
Symphony No.14, Op.135: Le Suicide
Symphony No.14, Op.135: Les Attentives I
Symphony No.14, Op.135: Les Attentives II
Symphony No.14, Op.135: A la Sante
Symphony No.14, Op.135: Reponse des cosaques zaparogues...
Symphony No.14, Op.135: O Delvig, Delvig!
Symphony No.14, Op.135: Der Tod des Dichters
Symphony No.14, Op.135: Schluss-Stuck
6 Poems Of Marina Tsvetaeva, Op.143a: My Poems
6 Poems Of Marina Tsvetaeva, Op.143a: Such Tenderness
6 Poems Of Marina Tsvetaeva, Op.143a: Hamlet's Dialogue With His Conscience
6 Poems Of Marina Tsvetaeva, Op.143a: The Poet And The Tsar
6 Poems Of Marina Tsvetaeva, Op.143a: No, The Drum Beat
6 Poems Of Marina Tsvetaeva, Op.143a: To Anna Akhmatova

Customer Reviews:

A Richly Nuanced Performance of Shostakovich's Symphony of Death.......2006-02-04

Despite the fact that there are multiple recordings of Shostakovich's deeply moving Symphony No. 14, this rather old but remastered recording is unique in the quality of performance: Bernard Haitink conducts his Concertgebouw Orchestra and elected to use non-Slavic singers Julia Varady and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau who in turn sing the poems in their original languages rather than the Russian translations used in the original premiere. The effect is staggeringly beautiful and if one must choose a single recording of this symphony, this would be the one that captures the essence of Shostakovich's vision.

Written in 1969 while ill, Shostakovich was naturally achingly concerned about his impending death and in response to his admiration for Moussorgsky's 'Songs and Dances of Death' he wished to make his musical statement about the end of life. 'They wanted the finale to be comforting, to say that death is only the beginning. But it's not a beginning, it's the real end, there will be nothing afterwards, nothing.' And with this grim concept he selected eleven poems by a varied group of poets who mostly died young: Garcia Lorca, Guillaume Appollinaire, Wilhelm Kuchelberger, and Rainer Maria Rilke. The poems are sung by soprano and baritone solo and in duet, and the beauty of Varady and Fischer-Dieskau intoning the words in Spanish, French, Russian, and German somehow gives the poetry more immediacy.

The orchestration is for twenty-one performers: two percussionist, celesta, and eighteen strings. The writing is transparent and delicate with some of the most gorgeous sectional ensemble playing (particularly for cellos and double bass) Shostakovich ever wrote. Haitink serves the score well. As an additional bonus on this CD, Haitink conducts the `Six Poems of Marina Tsvetaeva' beautifully sung by Ortrun Wenkel. For this reviewer the experience of hearing this chamber work that speaks so profoundly about death in the wonder of the acoustic of Disney Hall in Los Angeles makes this symphony emphatically one of Shostakovich's finest works. Esa-Pekka Salonen with the LA Philharmonic approached the work with such humanity and utter clarity of performance, using as soloists Matthias Goerne and brilliant young Russian dramatic soprano Tatiana Pavlovskaya to breathe meaning and incredible atmosphere that the effect was one of those once in a lifetime experiences. If only THAT performance could be added to the recorded repertoire.... Highly recommended. Grady Harp, February 06

Please note: This isn't in Russian.......2005-09-29

I haven't researched the various versions of the Shostakovich 14th, but my other CD under Bernstein is sung entirely in Russian, even though the poems come from other languages as well. I believe that's the standard way, but here Haitink's singers adapt to French, Spanish, etc. as these languages come up. This gives the original poets their native voices back, which i like. It also eliminates one layer of Slavic lugubriousness, which frankly can become quite oppressive when the texts are performed entirely in Russian.

Shostakovich And Matters Of Death.......2005-08-06

Like Gustav Mahler before him, Dmitri Shostakovich, towards the end of his life, began concerning himself with matters of death in his works. Here was a composer who had seen the horrors of two world wars, seen his artistic ambitions constricted by the demands of Joseph Stalin, and seen his older contemporary Sergei Prokofiev suffer the tortures of the damned under Stalin's reign of terror, and yet Shostakovich had survived and succeeded, largely thanks to sage champions on this side of the Iron Curtain such as Bernstein, Stokowski, and Ormandy.

But in his own ironic way, by the 1960s, he was dealing with Death itself, as can be gauged from his Fourteenth Symphony, a work in eleven parts that utilizes texts from writers such as Federico Garcia Lorca, Guillaume Apollinaire, Wilhelm Kuchelbecker, and Rainer Maria Rilke. The symphony, which requires soprano, bass, percussion, and string orchestra, was composed by Shostakovich in 1969 and premiered by his fellow composer Benjamin Britten in England in 1970. It remains thoroughly modern, but its subject is timeless. The same is true for the song cycle "6 Poems Of Marina Tsvetaeva", which he first scored for contralto and piano in 1973 and orchestrating them the following year, one year before he passed away.

Featuring Julia Varady, Ortrun Wenkel, and the legendary Dietrich Fisher-Dieskau, this recording is equally stunning for the conducting of the Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam by its longtime music director Bernard Haitink. Though these works were recorded a quarter century ago as part of Haitink's complete survey of Shostakovich's symphonies (a set that also included the London Philharmonic), the recording has aged fantastically well, and the three-prong combination of vocalists, orchestra, and conductor are superb in bringing Shotakovich's visions to the forefront, though they don't skip over the ever-present irony that was a trademark of the composer. A must-have for anyone with a taste for modern music in general, and Shostakovich in particular.

Utterly spiritual!.......2005-07-26

Mondelli and kph37's reviews are really into the spirit of the work, and I have no complaints with them at all.

There are political considerations on two levels. Let me dispose of the first quickly, though I don't mean to do so, because Haitink is truly one of the great conductors of the 20th century. But let's face it that he got caught up in the conductor contest of the Post-Reiner era, when recording companies were elevating Their Man over the others in a marketing joust. Poor Bernard was, in my opinion, a victim in this competition. He was the one who saw the value in letting us hear the inner parts, apart from the raging brass of Solti and colorful antics of Bernstein. Mercy!

As for Fidi's shortness of breath or trailing line, well, I think this was the reason for staging him in the work. Imagine, by contrast, bringing in, say, the great Erich Kunz. The bass-baritone portions of this work are those of resignation, not of confidence. For the sake of the poetry, Fidi was perfect. He is not supposed to be the bombast vocalist. His is the voice of sad resignation.

Now, the other political level, that of the composer. Shostakovich lived under Stalin's thumb, to an extent that no composer today can imagine. Some understanding of history is in order. Dmitri was in a life and death struggle with the homicidal maniac controlling the former Soviet Union. Some understanding of art requires an understanding of history. And, therefore, of empathy with Dmitri.

All told, this is a sublime recording. In future generations, the work will be reviewed only from the technical point of view. It takes musicians who lived through that ghastly horror of the German invasion of Russia, of one racist terrorist regime invading another.

This is a very perturbing work. Who could have done it better than those who lived through it?

Then, Ortrum Wenkel's performance of the Tsvetaeva songs should be given more attention. Yes, they are pretty literal readings. But aren't the works written the same dead pan way? These are hardly folksongs in the sense of Mahler or Britten, but introspective pieces. I really like her work here.

Buy this CD it while it lasts.

Surprisingly, Perhaps, a Dimly-Burning Wick of Hope.......2002-01-24

This is a clean and exciting performance of the fourteenth symphony; I still remember the chills I felt, hearing it the first time some seventeen years ago. This is the sort of piece which only Edward Gorey would like to listen to on a daily basis, but it is an exquisitely artistic outpouring of grief, rage, despair ... yet not, I think, of absolute resignation.

Most of the texts have to do with death, and almost none of the texts regards death in any light other than hopeless, or at the least sardonic. But there is one note something discordant to the otherwise unremitting gloom.

"O Delvig, Delvig!" always struck me as the heart of the fourteenth symphony, all the more for its warm, passionate cello choir, standing in stark contrast to the "flint-faced" sardonicism ("Malagueña," "Les Attentives I & II," "Réponse des cosaques zaporogues") and the externally-dramatic bleakness ("Lorelei," "À la Santé," and the bookends "De Profundis" and "Der Tod des Dichters") of most of the rest of the symphony.

And here at what, musically, I have always felt to be the quiet, self-effacing heart of the piece, we find a text which differs, not sharply perhaps, but significantly, from the unrelieved tone of despair-at-darkness of all the rest of the texts, which (with epochal significance) are more recent ... the sharp-relieved word-paintings of Garcia Lorca, the urbane rationalism and withering wit of Appolinaire. Here, in the company of some of the world's most highly-regarded poets (to add Rilke) we find a highly personal dedicatory poem, written by the unknown-outside-Russia Küchelbecker.

Baron Anton Antonovich Delvig (1798-1831) and Wilhelm Karlovich Küchelbecker (1797-1846) were both friends of Pushkin's, from their school days at the Imperial Lyceum at Tsarskoye Selo (where there still stands a magnificent palace with extensive grounds). All three were poets, men of education and refinement. Delvig was packed off to Siberia, and executed as a revolutionary.

O Delvig, Delvig! What reward is there
for noble deeds and verse?
Where and what is the joy in talent
amongst villains and fools?
In Juvenal's austere hand
the dreaded lash whistles at the villains
and wipes the color from their cheeks.
The power of the tyrants trembled

O Delvig, Delvig, what is persecution?
Immortality is the reward
both of valiant, inspired deeds
and of sweet singing!
Thus our union will not die,
proud, joyful and free!
In happiness and grief, firm is the union
of lovers of the eternal Muse!

The poem fits into Shostakovich's work with conveniently thorough aptness. The two obscurer poets were friends of Pushkin's, himself not only the Great Man of Russian letters, but an artist who found that his works needed to pass a censor. Delvig was a poet who got caught in the wheels of politics, and paid with his life.

Yet the message of the poem is not gloom alone; it is not simply a weeping at the injustices of society against Art and the Individual. It is an assurance that noble deeds and sweet singing are rewarded with immortality, and that the artistic bond of the friends will never die, either. The poem is actually a positive response to external grief.

For all the unrelenting gloom of the rest of the symphony, for all that Shostakovich is quoted as saying, "Death is it, after death, there is nothing" ... for all this, I don't believe that Shostakovich could have LIVED like that ... and certainly here in the fourteenth symphony, he did not quite write like that. This text, its musical treatment, and its place in the shape of the symphony, all this together is the dimly burning wick which would not be blown out.

And too, the one text set in the symphony which has nothing in particular to do with death ("Réponse des cosaques zaporogues") is about rage at, and contempt for, despots, expressed by a fiercely proud, free people. This reminds me that another piece of Shostakovich's which I have long meant to investigate is "The Execution of Stepan Razin," a cossack folk-hero who is a symbol of the spiritual power of free resistance against an oppressor.

And the ending of the fourteenth symphony is not the bleak, still resignation of "De Profundis/Der Tod des Dichters" ... but an ironic clip-clop "Conclusion"... and the closing musical gesture is a clipped, tutti, raging in the strings.

Certainly a great deal of his experience would teach Shostakovich despair, and it would have taken an extraordinarily strong and determined character to resist learning so.

Yet in this work, I see more than just the cynicism. You can be taught to say things, taught even to feel things as though they are practically inside you, and a lot of the life you step through can be about those things ... and yet, down underneath all the accreted layers, you may feel that, really, it isn't, cannot be, true.

Tracks:

The Gadfly: Ov
The Gadfly: Romance - Thomas Yang
The Gadfly: Galop
Five Days And Five Nights: Liberated Dresden
Hamlet: Intro
Hamlet: Ball At The Palace
Hamlet: In The Garden
Hamlet: Scene Of The Poisoning
Hamlet: The Duel And Death Of Hamlet
Tahiti Trot, (Vars On Tea For Two) Con No.1 - Derek Han/John Henes
Tahiti Trot, Con No.1: Allegro Moderato; Allegro Vivace
Tahiti Trot, Con No.1: Lento; Moderato; Allegro Con Brio

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Shostakovich: Theatre Music

Manufacturer: Chandos
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

Suites | Forms & Genres | Classical | Styles | Music

General | Classical | Styles | Music

General | Chamber Music | Classical | Styles | Music

General | Soundtracks | Styles | Music
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Hamlet

ASIN: B00005B1D6
Release Date: 2001-05-22

Shostakovich: Complete Songs, Vol. 3 (1922-1942)

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Shostakovich: Complete Songs, Vol. 3 (1922-1942)

Manufacturer: Delos Records
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

General | Classical | Styles | Music

General | International | Styles | Music

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ASIN: B00009Y3SV
Release Date: 2003-07-08

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