SHOSTAKOVICH: Symphony No. 7 “Leningrad” – Saint Petersburg Academic Symphony Orchestra/Alexander Dmitriev – Water Lily Acoustics

by | Jun 30, 2005 | SACD & Other Hi-Res Reviews | 0 comments

SHOSTAKOVICH: Symphony No. 7 “Leningrad” – Saint Petersburg
Academic Symphony Orchestra/Alexander Dmitriev – Water Lily Acoustics
multichannel SACD WLA-SW-77-SACD, c. 67’ ****:

It would be difficult to find a more appropriate and emotional
connection between a musical work, the performers playing it, and the
location of the performance. Shostakovich may have conceived of his
Seventh Symphony before the Nazis began their siege of Leningrad (now
again St. Petersburg) but the work depicts with brutal realism the
threat to the people of the great city from the enemy war machine. It
was even performed in Leningrad during the 900-day siege by this very
same orchestra, with army band musicians filling in for missing members
of the symphony. Some critics of the time and even today dismiss the
work as overdoing the cinematic battle scene bit in a transparent bid
to win favor with the Soviet authorities by stepping up the propaganda
values of the work.  There is plenty of such noisy display for
sure, but it is little different from the Fifth Symphony in that
respect, and with the “best seat in the house” aural perspective of
this purist two-mike recording the clangorous climaxes aren’t nearly as
in-your-face as on most multimiked recordings of the work.

In fact the conclusion of this symphony is very similar to the
composer’s Fifth. The performance is fiery and committed; when the
heroic theme comes to the fore in the final movement one empathizes
with the players as much as the wartime residents of Leningrad – that
they have made it thru the harrowing experience of the siege.  As
with the other Water Lily Russian series recordings, this one was done
at a live concert. There are some rather odd audience sounds
occasionally (I’m used to Russian audiences remaining so quiet that
live recordings sound like studio efforts) but they are worth the
realism and natural acoustics of this excellent multichannel effort.

– John Sunier

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