Ondine ODE 955-2 (1999-2000; 60 min.)
This takes me back to 1998 when I first began reviewing for the site. BMG-Melodiya were good enough to support us at that time by allowing us review copies of some of their (still available) Shchedrin series. These included the first two symphonies and the three piano concertos (there are five now) with the Fifth premiered in Los Angeles in 1999 by Mustonen, its dedicatee. Mustonen is as capable a pianist as he is a conductor.
Shchedrin is known for his Carmen ballet written for a supercharged vast string band and a battery of percussion. The ballet is an overwhelming work in virtuoso hands.
The composer is a Muscovite who studied with Yakov Flier (piano) and composition with Yuri Shaporin. He refused to conform to Soviet norms and maintained links with exiled dissidents such as Rostropovich. He now divides his time between Munich and Russia. His Third Symphony (Sinfonia Concertante) has been written for Lorin Maazel and the Bayerische Rundfunk.
The two works on this disc are powerfully atmospheric. The cello concerto is driven by sincere conviction shining through a nostalgic impulse. That impulse traces its way to the obliteration of a town (Aleksin, on the river Oka) which was one of his childhood haunts. The town of his memory was bulldozed and in its place the Soviet régime constructed soulless apartment blocks. The experience of returning to a place that was the same in only name has born three concertos. This triptych comprises concertos for cello (Rostropovich), Viola (Bashmet) and Violin (Vengerov). The cello work is suggestive rather than experiential. It wrestles with expression in cell-like figures; easy melody is not Shchedrin's way. Neither is it entirely uningratiating: an innocent village organ wheezes and its sound seems to melt in the heat of memory in the fourth track. At 12.30 in track 4 the cello at the highest reach whispers and skitters its way into the stratosphere and silence. The work suggests the more morose stretches of the Shostakovich second cello concerto with Bach-like incursions. This work does not have the surface glamour of Tavener nor the dramatic grip of the Sallinen Concerto. Its experience parallels that of the St Kilda Symphony by Jerold James Gordon - a work written in the 1980s reflective of the dispossession of the St Kildans.
The Seagull suite is made up of seven movements based on Chekhov's play. No movement is longer than 4.52. This is restless more demonstrative music but downbeat consistent with the gloom of the original. The mood is lightened (or perhaps intensified) by the flickering interludes which dance in rapid unrest like a collision between Kastchei's skittering Firebird, Tchaikovsky's Dance of the Flowers and a feral Prokofiev waltz.
I hope that Ondine will now turn to the other two Aleksin concertos (the cello concerto is the longest of the three) and couple them on one disc.
Rob Barnett
Best known for his ballet after Bizet, Shchedrin’s two works here communicate in a plethora of styles and languages
Shostakovich chose to work within the Soviet Union establishment’s ‘liberal’ wing. So, too, did Shchedrin. But Shchedrin’s problem is that he isn’t dead and so hasn’t been forgiven for criticising Edison Denisov in the 1960s or for signing that infamous Pravda denunciation of Sakharov in 1973 – the one Shostakovich also put his name to. He is not the only composer of our time who might be described as an eclectic – far from it, yet he is often accused of a certain slipperiness or worse.
What of the music itself? The Cello Concerto, Sotto Voce, was composed for and was previously recorded by Mstislav Rostropovich with the LSO under Ozawa (Teldec, 6/96 – nla). It is a fascinating, often haunting work, one that strikes deeper than the conceptually related Concerto Cantabile in which Shchedrin showcases the talents of Maxim Vengerov (EMI, 6/00). The opening approaches the ecstatic/contemplative Tavener of The Protecting Veil; the more rebarbative passages are closer to Kancheli. The potentially cliched childhood memory of shepherds piping across fields is put to strikingly original use. The finale, in particular, is a (sometimes Brittenish) commentary on the fragility of innocence, but it is also ‘green’, lamenting the loss of pastoral simplicity to the ravages of the modern age in the manner of Elem Klimov’s (Schnittke-scored) film Farewell (1981). If the surprise deployment of recorders momentarily recalls Ligeti’s use of ocarinas, Shchedrin’s remains the simpler – some would say cruder – art. He wants above all to communicate and in this he surely succeeds. The piece still feels over-long.
The coupling offers highlights from one of Shchedrin’s many ballets on Russian literary classics – he is married to the ballerina Maya Plisetskaya and was responsible for the celebrated dance version of Carmen. A Bolshoi recording of The Seagull was briefly available through Russian Disc. Here, though, the personality is harder to pin down. The composer scores wonderfully well, but his slapstick circus interludes and expressionistic melodramas seem more purely illustrative, less fresh. Fortunately, as so often from this source, Ondine’s warm, wide-ranging Finlandia Hall recordings are a source of pleasure in themselves. Olli Mustonen, best known for the edgy individualism of his piano playing, secures an excellent response from the Helsinki Philharmonic, while Marko Ylonen, in the Concerto, seems not one whit overawed by Rostropovich’s example.
The copious notes are at once helpful and off-putting: only time will tell whether this music is quite as significant as the composer imagines it to be. I was reminded of what Mark Lubotsky had to say about Shostakovich’s funeral: ‘In Shchedrin’s speech every word was in its proper place. One only wished for a bit less self- assertion and a bit more of the grief felt by the people outside the Hall.’ Recommended – with reservations.
David Gutman
Gramophone, December 2000