BBC Legends BBCL 4226-2, 65:18 (Distrib. Koch) ****:
Here captured are two fine concerts led by Evgeny Svetlanov (1928-2002), the first recorded in Usher Hall, Edinburgh with the LSO (28 August 1978) of the Shostakovich Fifth Symphony, a work which has endured on records since the days of Stokowski, Rodzinski, and Mitropoulos. The composer noted that the music traced the evolution of a personality, though the vigorous finale is tormented by “forced rejoicing.” A reworking of the composer’s musical ideal–the Mahler First in D Major–Shostakovich adds his own idiosyncratic colors and martial, driving rhythms. For the opening movement, Svetlanov whips the principal strings, brass, and tympani to a molten frenzy before the stretti sink of their own weight into a (political) morass, a spiritual collapse that must turn to nature–flute, horn, and harp–for some sense of resurrection. Between savagery and delicacy, the LSO responds like a well-oiled machine, the fanfares occasionally topping with a rough edge that Svetlanov seems to savor.
The bass-heavy Scherzo (Allegretto) conveys a requisite sarcasm, not far from the mockeries of Kurt Weill and his ilk. The violin solo carries a whimsical elegance, answered by flute and glissandi strings. The lied has a distinct peasant quality, a bassoon-led laendler choked with vodka. Brilliant pizzicati lead us to the swaggering, slightly demented, swirling coda. The Largo, however, brings us the exalted tenderness of which both composer and the LSO are capable, the music tragically intensifying almost beyond repair, like Macduff‘s lament for his suffering Scotland. The last movement reaps the whirlwind, the horns and tympani accumulating enough energy to set a monstrous clamp on the final note, evoking nothing less than delighted shrieks from the audience.
Rachmaninov’s symphonic elegy after the painting by Arnold Boecklin provides another excuse for the composer to intone the ubiquitous Dies Irae of the Requiem Mass. Svetlanov’s reading with the USSR Symphony (2 August 1968) for a Promenade Concert establishes the rocking, eerie motif in layered colors, creamy, undulating, the sweet allure of Death. Rooks and distant birds can be heard over the craggy isle, the USSR string sound rife with that cold, windy sonority that only Mother Russia produces in her orchestral children. The horn and string mix increases its intensity, reaching a delirious pinnacle in the sirens’ song that might be Hades pleading with Persephone. The gorgeous sound rivals Stokowski for sheer lustrous sheen, the seas around the isle having become a torrent of passion from Tchaikovsky’s Francesca da Rimini. The overt chanting of the Dies Irae attracts and repels, a song we hear all too soon; but the audience explodes with delight at its rending by these excellent Soviet musicians.
— Gary Lemco
