Historical Russian Archives - Gennady Rozhdestvensky

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Historical Russian Archives: Gennady Rozhdestvensky
Orchestral works by Haydn, Dvorák, Fleischmann, Shostakovich, Shebalin, Shaporin, Rakov, Agadzhikov, Volkonsky, Belimov, Polovinkin, Mosolov et al
Various orchestras / Gennady Rozhdestvensky
Live recordings 1964-88

The conductor Gennady Rozhdestvensky was never a predictable artist on disc and his hottest performances could easily power the national grid. Such is the intensity of at least two Shostakovich performances that turn up in Brilliant Classics’s Gennady Rozhdestvensky Edition. I cannot recall ever hearing a more confrontational account of the Ninth Symphony than the one Rozhdestvensky gave with the USSR Ministry of Culture Symphony Orchestra on December 21, 1982, the work’s cheerful, rather sardonic “not-a-ninth-symphony” spirit suddenly pushed to the edges of irony and at times sounding positively sadistic, the first and last movements in particular. A very extreme case of “what he really meant”, whether or not you agree.

A Tenth Symphony from the same year and a Leningrad from 1968 are similarly combustible and moody, the latter captured in mono and with a first-movement build-up that initially seems to be holding fire but that soon draws on reserves of intensity that equal the Ninth. Also included are vividly characterised accounts of the First and Fourth symphonies, taped in 1976 and 1987 respectively, and superbly performed but rather constricted stereo recording of the still scandalously underrated Suite on Verses of Michelangelo, Shostakovich’s completion of Benjamin Fleischmann’s mini-opera Rothschild’s Violin (a moving and memorable musical statement about Soviet anti-Semitism), some lyrical and occasionally amusing British and American folksong settings including “Blow the wind southerly”, “Billy Boy”, “Comin’ thro’ the rye” and so on, with both English and Russian texts used. Other Shostakovich scores range from the ballet suite The Bolt to entr’actes from Katerina Izmaylova and other shorter works.

Two more novelties complete this second CD, Robert Volkmann’s engaging overture Richard III (with its surprise quote of “The Campbells are coming”) and Spohr’s brief Faust Overture. Add music by Haydn (attrib), Bach arr Mozart (Adagios and Fugues), Adam, Agadzhikov, Belimov, Cherubini, Gluck, Mosolov, Polovinkin, Rakov, Shaporin, Shebalin, Johann Strauss II and Volkonsky and you get the drift: a typically eclectic Rozhdestvensky mix, with heights and middle-heights, and never a dull moment. The recordings vary but none is less than acceptable and again Ates Orga writes some splendid notes. Rob Cowan