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Originally Posted by mbhaub /img/forum/go_quote.gif
The 5th was well done, but the 3rd movement didn't rip your heart out, flawlessly played though it was. The last movement he took the revisionist stand and dragged the coda out mercilessly, an approach I don't care for anyway. The last few bars can lift you out of your seat if it's done well. Just goes to show that just because you come from one gene pool doesn't mean that genius is handed down...
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Hi mbhaub,
thankyou for your comments and report of concert.
If you would like to hear Maxim conducting "rip your heart out", I thoroughly recommend you listen to the recently released CD on Warner Classics of both Shostakovich's Violin Concertos - played by Daniel Hope, and with Maxim conducting. Some of that music in the 3rd movement of Symph. #5 sounds very much to me the initial idea which Shost. then developed further for his 1st Violin Concerto, and in the Violin Concerto we get it in the context of a complete work of related, sequential ideas - rather like going on a journey, as distinct from in the 5th Symphony where it is delibrately put there as one of 4 distinct statements Shost. decided he needed to make.
Maxim will know all this - and why - to greater degree than we do, and I think this is likely the reason he conducts the various works the way he does, as distinct from some of the ways other Conductors have presented them.
Remember the Title of the 5th Symph. and consider what Shost. may have intended each movement to sound like in performance.
Yes, once a Work has been published any Conductor can peform it how-ever he wishes and put into that the emphasis he wants to make, including using the music to tell some other story than the Composer's - you will have heard some do this with various Composer's works.
Yes, listeners are entitled to prefer adaptions they can apply to their own lives, etc ...
If I've understood the situation of that period of Shost's predicament correctly, then dragging the Coda out mercilessly is quite valid , however, I don't care for it either ! If I was to attend a Concert including 5th Symph., I would endeavour to leave -{quietly and quickly}- at the end of the 3rd movement. I don't want to hear any of the 4th movement, as it sounds like a delibrate caricature of the type of older Russian music that the Powers-that-were wanted him to compose, thus he gave them a B-grade version of such !
One can hear that type of music composed A-grade in some of Tchaikovsky's Symph's - much better quality, and Shost, seems to have intended that - to show the tin-ears what he thought of them and their expectations for Production-Line music.
{The "business" is little different today - consider what is not only churned out in popular music forms delibrately cliched Saleable for people of all age groups, but also in co-opting Classical music styles for such, including in some Film sound-tracks, and it has always been that way - listen to some of what Mozart composed for specific people or circumstances.}
"Genius" usually isn't handed down, but some form of Talent usually does appear in the child of a talented parent. Maxim may not be the ideal conductor of all his father's Symphonies -{and it seems that no conductor is, nor do I expect any single to be given the substantial diversity of styles across, and inspirations preceding, 15 Symphonies}- however it does seem he is attempting to give the World the intentions of his father. For some works he will achieve this better than for others.
Have you heard his conducting with Heinrich Schiff playing both the Cello Concertos, released by Philips years ago ? That recording has an amazing coherence and seeming unity in thinking by both Conductor and Soloist that is rarely achieved.
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Hi Dark Angel,
I haven't heard all of Solti's Shost. recordings as his of Symph. #8 was more than enough to put me off him for Shost., and to such degree that I didn't listen to all of that one as it fell so far short of the standard of Mravinsky's first recording -{very old and poor quality sound}- for example, Solti didn't seem to know what the solo woodwind instrument piece - at about 17 minutes into the 1st movement - should be presented as, etc ...
Several Conductors have recorded this Symph. in ways I prefer, but perhaps Solti got it together for the other Symph's he recorded, as you like them.
Bernstein recorded the 7th with NYPO for Columbia in the USA way back around the time of his others for them, now owned by Sony, thus it is not likely Sony would agree to a joint release with D.G. for theirs.
I haven't heard Bernstein's D.G. 7th, but will if I get the opportunity.
As regards his older version, well if you can find a copy of Svetlanov's Russian recording of that time, released by Melodiya, you may not want the older Bernstein version ! Svetlanov made more sense of the 7th to me than others I have heard, though I haven't heard Ancerl's recording.
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I'm still very much wanting to read any information any owners of Kondrashin's Russian recording of Symph. #4 can post about the audible anomoly I described in my post #378 above.
Such would be quite obviously audible through Headphones if on your recording.
Thankyou in anticipation , Chris.
