Shostakovich: Symphony No. 8 ~ Petrenko

Shostakovich: Symphony No. 8 ~ Petrenko

Shostakovich: Symphony No. 8 ~ Petrenko
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CD Details

Composer: Shostakovich
Conductor: Vasily Petrenko
Orchestra: Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra
Edition: Music CD
Audio: English (Unknown)
CD Release Date: 2010-05-25
Music Label: Naxos
Soundtracks:
  1. Symphony No. 8 in C minor, Op. 65 (Stalingrad): 1. Adagio - Allegro non troppo
  2. Symphony No. 8 in C minor, Op. 65 (Stalingrad): 2. Allegretto
  3. Symphony No. 8 in C minor, Op. 65 (Stalingrad): 3. Allegro non troppo -
  4. Symphony No. 8 in C minor, Op. 65 (Stalingrad): 4. Largo -
  5. Symphony No. 8 in C minor, Op. 65 (Stalingrad): 5. Allegretto

Music reviews of Shostakovich: Symphony No. 8 ~ Petrenko

Music Review: Petrenko revises Shostakovich, to compelling effect
Rating: 5 Stars

The boyish-looking Vasily Petrenko has a mature musical gift and astonishing command over the Royal Liverpool orchestra, already a fine ensemble that is now more coherent than ever. Having heard Petrenko in concert, I've been a bit disappointed in his revisionist Shostakovich, which seems too underplayed and over thought. No doubt when you grow up with Shostakovich as a steady diet, the new generation of Russian conductors wants to offer some new angles. In this new Eighth Sym., Petrenko takes a risk from the first bars by avoiding the massive monolithic style that made the versions by Soviet conductors, especially Mravinsky, so compelling. Compared to their heroic gloom, Petrenko's starts out in discreet melancholy, almost privately. His beautiful phrasing saves him from understatement; he tries to mesmerize us by spinning a continuous line that extends forever without a visible break. Solti had much the same idea, and in both cases it feels like a more breathable, less oppressive way.

As he feels each sinuous turn of events in this long movement, Petrenko succeeds in proving that his intuitions are deep, but I do think that the listener needs to be quite familiar with the Eighth already. Otherwise, the effect overall could be too pallid, like remembered tragedy rather than immediate tragedy. (The recording medium also loses a good deal of the remarkable intensity one hears form this orchestra when Petrenko is in full command. Some might sorely miss the crushing virtuosity of the Chicago Sym. in this music when Solti reaches the most devastating climaxes.) The two central scherzos are the easiest movements in the whole symphony, and I think Petrenko was wise to lighten them up and remove some of their bite compared to Mravinsky and Kondrashin. He adds an alert, mercurial quality that makes its effect with the point of a knife rather than a bludgeon. The faster than usual tempos are heady, especially in the runaway carnival ride of the second Scherzo.

The mystery of the Eighth doesn't fully arrive until the Largo and finale, where Shostakovich reassembles some of his earlier material but in fragmented, hopeless form, as if music-making can be only the most transitory refuge form ruin. No other composer with the exception of Mahler achieves such a strange but exciting ambivalence toward humor, violence, and hope. But Shostakovich is more enervated than Mahler, no doubt because real terror, of the sort imposed by Stalin, is so exhausting. The banality woven into these last two movements alternates with eerie jitters that salvage tedium through intermittent shocks and lonely musing.

It's in this music and some of the preceding parts of the Scherzos that the revisionist in Petrenko justifies his instincts. What are we to do with Shostakovich's soul after it burns to ashes before our eyes? What feeling emerges after boredom and numbness take their toll? Petrenko has good ideas about both issues, and although one cannot deny the terrifying glories of Mravinsky, this is utterly compelling in a new way.
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