Dmitri Shostakovich (1906–1975)
Symphony No. 2 in B major, Op. 14, ‘To October’ (1927)
Symphony No. 5 in D minor, Op. 47 (1937)
CBSO Chorus
BBC Philharmonic Orchestra/John Storgårds
Texts and translations included
rec. 2025, MediaCityUK, Salford, Manchester, UK
Reviewed from a WAV download 44.1kHz/16-bit
Chandos CHSA5378 SACD [67]
What exactly are we hearing at the start of Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 2? The musicological answer is Shostakovich’s development of the techniques Berg used in the drowning scene from Wozzeck. But as always, Shostakovich adds so much to what he borrows. The scene conjured by the music here is one of immense latent power and carries more than a hint of menace: the swirl of mephitic water, initially unclear forms slowly emerging – a reimagining for the 20th century of Haydn’s ‘Representation of Chaos’, perhaps. Thanks to the skill of the BBC Philharmonic and John Storgårds and the Chandos engineers, Shostakovich’s dramatic vision is realised more vividly here than I’ve ever heard it before. It’s not just the impeccably calibrated emergence of those musical forms achieved by Storgårds and his players that impresses, but how he brings ever more definition to what is unfolding. We realise that what seemed musically formless now has solidity, the BBC Phil’s double-basses masterfully establishing a foundational ostinato without us noticing, and the apparently random serpentine brass and woodwind lines gradually acquiring coherence.
In his booklet notes David Fanning points out that Shostakovich’s probable structural model for this single-movement work was the outdoor representations of the early days of the revolution devised by Futurist dramatists. One can think of each of the Symphony’s four sections as a float wheeled into a public space depicting an aspect of the narrative of the Revolution. So, the gradual clearing of the ominously shrouded first section gives way to the revolutionary order and discipline of the second section’s march rendered with a driven facility here, which unexpectedly collapses into the brilliant chaos of the third section’s contrapuntal lines. Storgårds manages the transition between those sections highly effectively and in his reading Shostakovich’s many lines of counterpoint become the epitome of a Mayakovskian theatrical experiment, disparate manufactured texts being declaimed at us simultaneously, regardless of our ability to make sense of them. The gradual winding down of this haranguing to the beautifully played antic violin solo from Yuri Torchinsky is again well managed, so that the introduction to the final section, announced by the factory hooter (a hand-wound claxon here) lands with real force. This section, with its choral setting of a laughably bad propaganda-stuffed text by Alexander Bezïmensky, can be problematic interpretatively. (‘I’m composing the chorus with great difficulty. The words!!!!’, Shostakovich told Boleslav Yavorsky). I’ve heard accounts where it feels as if the chorus has been told to portray a parody of jolly Soviet workers, but the effortful archness and irony which result simply don’t work. As he has for the rest of his Shostakovich cycle so far, Storgårds plays it straight, with excellent results. The CBSO Chorus sing with warmth and fervour but also real attack – listen to the men’s ferocious first entry after the whistle for example – and great clarity. Simon Halsey has clearly done a lot of work with the Chorus on their Russian, and even if one could not mistake them for native speakers, what they achieve carries dramatic punch. I love the attention to detail displayed too. When the voices have to shout and speak, for example, the disciplined togetherness of their singing gives way to something less coordinated, which sounds entirely natural and heartfelt.
It’s good news for Shostakovich lovers that there’s another excellent account of this symphony then, coming so soon after that of Gianandrea Noseda and the LSO as part of their now completed cycle. My slight preference is for Storgårds who has better recorded sound (although LSO Live work wonders in the Barbican these days) and an even more committed sounding chorus, but Noseda, like Storgårds, has clearly spent a lot of time in rehearsal on what is a rarely performed work to excellent effect. As Nick Barnard pointed out in his recent review of the LSO set, however, Noseda’s account of the Second has not been issued separately. You can stream it of course, but if you want it in better sound, you’re stuck with having to buy the complete set, which is awkward if you’ve been buying the individual releases. Chandos appear committed to separate releases of all the symphonies in advance of a boxed set, which is good news. Where more than one symphony has been included on a disc, as here, this approach also rewards the listener through juxtaposition.
Hearing these two symphonies, written ten years apart, side by side makes certain things newly apparent. I’ve mostly seen the Symphony No. 2 as one side of a coin which has the superficially similar Symphony No. 3 on the other, both a bit disconnected from the others. Listening to this release, however, other things become apparent. The most obvious, of course, is the development of the composer in that time, lessons learned musically and from life, especially the Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk fallout. If the rawness and modernism apparent in the Second peak in the Fourth Symphony, it’s interesting to observe how some elements of the earlier work still surface in the more sophisticated Fifth. This is perhaps most striking in the Largos of both. That of the Second is, as I’ve said, a very effective piece of drama especially in this performance. What one hears listening to the Largo of the Fifth in close succession on this disc is something stripped of the rhetoric of the Second, delivered in a highly accomplished and obviously more mature style. But there’s also a deliberately ambiguous emotional core which feels almost synthetic at times, recalling the theatrical origins of the Second. It’s a connection I’ve not made before, and I think it’s helped by the fact that these two performances were recorded together.
There are other fascinating details: the violin solos in each, for example, repay comparison: in the second movement of the Fifth the essentially jaunty tone of the earlier work’s solo is recognisable but possessed now of a sardonic trajectory. And the ‘upbeat’ conclusion to the last section of the Finale of the Fifth is again allowed to speak for itself by Storgårds as in the Second, without being overdriven. Overall, this account of the Fifth is very well played. It sustains tension throughout without pushing tempi or dynamics into the kind of exaggeration that can make the music feel overwrought, which is entirely consistent with the approach to the symphonies Storgårds has adopted hitherto. That’s welcome as far as I’m concerned: if I’m investing in a complete set, I want to know that a conductor has an overarching vision for the works and won’t produce an outlier that breaks the cycle’s coherence. Noseda has taken a similar approach with the LSO and reaped dividends. That means he’s lighter and more lyrical in his account of the Fifth than Storgårds, but the darker hues conjured and maintained by the BBC Phil feel highly authentic, and the reading grows in intensity as it progresses.
This is a notable addition to a strong cycle. If I’ve written more about the Symphony No. 2 here, that’s largely down to the enthusiasm of rediscovery — I still can’t get that extraordinary opening out of my head. Storgårds’s Fifth, meanwhile, matches the best of what has come before.
Dominic Hartley
Other review: Ralph Moore
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