Symphony No 10 opus 93
The Big Lightning

Russian State Symphony Orchestra
Russian State Symphonic Cappella
Valery Polyansky (conductor)

Chandos CHAN 9522 (74 minutes : DDD)

Certainly not a Shostakovich 10 to rival the best – Polyansky is much more at home in The Big Lightning fragments, which show the composer’s lighter side

Though well received in certain quarters, Valery Polyansky’s Shostakovich series has not ignited much enthusiasm in these pages. Set against Chandos’s audacious integrale of Dutilleux orchestral music, this latest Shostakovich instalment is indeed something of a let down. The packaging is up to the company’s usual high standards with full texts and helpful annotations, but the main offering here is a rehearse-record run-through of Shostakovich’s Tenth that scarcely competes in an overcrowded market. While some will like the idea of Soviet-accented winds, the reality brings unacceptable intonation and inconsistent balances. The epic quality of the production is only superficially in line with the Chandos house style given the lack of weight in the violins and the cussedly obtrusive timps. Certain passages go well: I liked the consoling warmth of the strings in the closing stages of the first movement; on the other hand, the scherzo really does need more bite (whether or not it has anything to do with Stalin) and so does the (de-Stalinising?) finale. Such laboured tempos can only be justified by the sort of intensity brought to this repertoire by Gennadi Rozhdestvensky.

Chandos does have an ace up its sleeve, however. Shostakovich completists will be pleased to have a modern recording of the fragments from his unfinished operetta The Big Lightning (1932). From the same ideological and stylistic melting pot that gave us The Golden Age (1930), this is Shostakovich in his light-music vein, recycling a number from his own music-hall show Hypothetically Murdered (1931) and jokily alluding to Glinka’s The Red Poppy and the Russian folktune used in the finale of Tchaikovsky’s Fourth. Polyansky – as so often – seems happier in music with a vocal element, and the (much more recent) recording is altogether better. A mixed bag then, for aficionados only.

David Gutman

(From: Gramophone, March 2001)