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| Decca (Full price) (LP) 421 120-1DH; (Cassette) 421 120-4DH; (CD) 421 120-2DH (56 minutes: DDD). |
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| Symphony - selected comparisons: |
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| Concertgebouw, Haitink (12/82) (DECC) (LP) SXDL 7551 |
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| Concertgebouw, Haitink (9/83) (DECC) (CD) 410 017-2DH |
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| BPO, Bychkov (3/87) (PHIL) (LP) 420 069-1PH |
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| BPO, Bychkov (6/87) (PHIL) (CD) 420 069-2PH |
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Ashkenazy's first shot at Shostakovich is close to a bull's-eye. At least by comparison Bychkov (Philips) scores no better than an outer, and Haitink's bull's-eye (also for Decca) is arguably on the wrong target altogether.
Having said that, it did come as something of a surprise to look at the sleeve after the first play-through. I would not have associated Decca with the matt finish on the recorded sound; certainly it is nothing like the high-gloss they gave Haitink and the Concertgebouw (which I feel does the music no favours, spectacular though it may be); and despite signs of star quality in the woodwind I confess I had the orchestra down as a lesser-known body than the RPO, largely because of less-than-full-bodied violins and imperfectly blended brass.
But a more pleasant surprise was that a conductor with no track record in Shostakovich should provide such complete identification with his complex inner world. Like all the finest Shostakovich interpreters Ashkenazy projects the ambivalence behind the notes desolation in the tranquillity brutishness in the energy, numbness in the lamenting, and so on—something which on the whole eludes Haitink. And he shows that it is possible to do this with minimum departure from the letter of the score—unlike Bychkov and, sad to say, also Mravinsky, Rostropovich and Maxim Shostakovich.
The spectral quality of the first movement coda is a very special moment indeed with Ashkenazy, and it comes after one of the best-judged pacings of the central drama on record. Initially there seems to be too short a break before the second movement, yet its uncouth jackbooted progress soon demonstrates the psychological justification for that interruption and again close attention to the markings of articulation pays enormous dividends (even the added slur in the horn theme, which Ashkenazy might have spared us, is not entirely out of character). The violin solo in the Trio is rather unsettled.
Ashkenazy sustains the intimidated inwardness of the Largo without recourse to exaggeration of any kind, and tempos in the finale are spot-on, at least until the problematic apex of the accelerando, where he joins the long list of interpreters who fail to make a convincing transition to the emotional plateau which follows. The inexorable pull towards a conclusion forced out through bared teeth is superbly judged.
This is not perhaps a version to stand unchallenged for decades but to my mind it currently heads a not specially distinguished field. As a welcome bonus we are offered the five Fragments, Op. 42, composed in a single day in June 1935, just before Shostakovich set to work on the Fourth Symphony, and not performed until 1965. These aphoristic studies, each for a different instrumental ensemble, contain anticipations of the parody-waltz in the finale of the Fourth Symphony (No. 5), as well as a stifled try-out for the main first movement theme of the Fifth (No. 3). More interestingly they display that instinct for the laconic experiment which goes back to Shostakovich's student days, and which from January 1936 would become taboo. These are Shostakovich's 'Sarcasms', and they receive appropriately sharp-edged and colourful performances.
DJF