I don't have favorite recordings that last over time because I am in a process of constant discovery. One summer I spent listening only to gamelan music, the next summer it was Haydn string quartets. Right now I am listening mostly to Bruckner symphonies in this recording:
But this is a box I keep coming back to:
Here is a sample:
Anon from London. Those quartets by Shostakovich are extraordinary. I've been listening to the set by the Sorrel Quartet:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.prestomusic.com/classical/products/7922839--shostakovich-complete-string-quartets-volume-1
I still haven't covered them all, but am listening to each many times - am not in a hurry!
The more I listen to Shostakovich over the years, the more I become convinced that he is a great composer who was in command of virtually every genre.
ReplyDeleteShostakovich has been one of my favorites just about my whole life. It's too bad he didn't live to write the full twenty-four quartets he hoped to but the fifteen he gave us are all magnificent.
ReplyDeleteBefore the Cold War was over, though, there was a robust mainstream musicological claim that the guy was a lightweight who hadn't mastered sonata forms and sonata forms were obsolete anyway because of tonality being used up. Sometimes a mainstream critical axiom is disproven because an artist and their work withstands the waves of disapproval. I recall a terse observation that in jazz Dave Brubeck prevailed by continuing to make music and be a decent person to people so long he outlived all the critics who claimed he wasn't legitimate jazz. Shostakovich's music has certainly outlasted the careers of a bunch of people who dismissed his music. How many people are rushing to listen to Virgil Thomson compared to DSCH these days?
Wenatchee, I couldn't agree more! I never heard Shostakovich until I was in my late 20s and I did not begin to appreciate how great he was until I was in my mid-40s. The reason for this was he was completely ignored in my undergraduate music courses--as if he didn't exist. That tells us something about academic fashions.
ReplyDeleteAnon from London. It certainly does. The Boulez attitude was dominant in those days. But since his death, Shostakovich has been lucky with his interpreters and advocates. All the great Russian conductors perform him, and I have heard stunning performances of most of the symphonies in London. I remember the Boston Symphony doing the 4th for example - unbelievably powerful.
ReplyDeleteYes, the Symphony No. 4 is an incredibly powerful work that had to live in a drawer for years until Stalin died! One of the most striking performances I have witnessed was of the Symphony No. 7 with the McGill Symphony. Sitting in the third row, that eleven minute first movement crescendo simply is unrecordable...
ReplyDeleteI rather enjoy Bernstein teaching the first symphony to a youth orchestra:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-Wq-_ZPQ3U
Thanks, that's a great clip!
ReplyDeleteAnon from London: Thinking of reputations: I've been listening to the symphonies of Malcolm Arnold, who by the end of his life was more or less universally derided. Since then, a number of complete sets have been released on disc - and to my surprise and delight, I find myself admiring them. I can see why they were more or less anathema during the heady days of European modernism, but nowadays we can listen to pieces of this kind on their own terms, and even find ourselves enjoying them!
ReplyDeleteThe only Malcolm Arnold I have listened to is his Guitar Concerto. Thanks for the tip on the symphonies.
ReplyDelete