Shostakovich Symphony No.4 Dutoit NHKso.

[valikacska]

...as if he had not written - for some of us his greatest most intimate works - his string quartets...

to read politics into everything what DS created is a very inappropriate angle

and yes he is for many people a very special composer, Bartok would be another one

[hyeonj315]

Shostakovich is reason why i live.

[jessichaos08]

Yes people do care about the actual score

but to emotionally interpret the score and get a real understanding you must look at the politics of it as well.

I'm sorry to inform you music isn't always what is written on the page.

[emmarayward]

Jesus guys, fuck the politics. Does anybody care about the actual score?

[wbaker7]

And I did say "slowly" downhill after 4th/Lady Mac. Look I agree he did soldid work after that and personally I love Soviet era music but no ? that he lost the edge he had at time of 4th. Yes many same themes and sound that followed can be traced to 4th but it was now conventionalized and with the thought of state endorsment in the back of his mind

[wbaker7]

in many ways shostakovich's greatest--after this it was all slowly down hill

[NailI3unny]

You can't possibly say that it went downhill after this. I mean, yeah, this was one of his greatest symphonies (if not his best), but it doesn't completely overshadow everything by him, and the symphonies that came after this one certainly weren't on a downward trend. In fact, I think that he was just hitting his stride with this symphony. After all, the sound he developed in this symphony is really the sound that everyone came to identify as his. Everything after just followed the same sound.

[wbaker7]

sorry i can't agree. what followed--although a lot of it was good and i like a great deal of it (for example I agree with Booksspan that 8th symphony is one of the most convincing of post WWII era) --and i do like Soviet era music--still nearly everything D.S. did symphonic releam had to meet state approval and that did mean he lost his edge...state approval always had to be in the back of his mind at least during his most creaive years...it was state interference that sent a great on downward

[FungoBoy]

read his biography plz

[wbaker7]

what is that supposed to mean? I have read several bios of DS. Do u mean his memoirs? i have read that too assuming it is his own words--not all scholars think that it is--Orlando Figes for example. But what does reading his bio/memoirs have to do with what i said. all i said was that the 4th was the high point of his creative output.

[wbaker7]

what in DS's bio would change what i had to say? i had said that i thought the 4th was his creatvie high point and he never recaptured that moment through no fault of his own but owing to state interfernce. (you might mean he sent covert messages in his music of latter years--i dont know how one can verify that) That doesnt mean i don't love what came after the 4th (I do) it only means that his originality was blunted afterwards

[ComtedeMonteC]

This comment factually incorrect. Shostakovich's 9th symphony was not at all approved of by Stalin and as a result of this symphony, asked for by Stalin to celebrate the victory at the end of WWII, Shostakovich lost his post at the Moscow conservatoire. The 9th symphony is sarcastic and Shostakovich is here thumbing his nose at Stalin.

[wbaker7]

u make a good point--it was expected he would deliver another great war symphony and as u say he did just the reverse. so i concede your point and no doubt it burned stalin and zhandov etc. having said that the 9th in many ways confirms my overall point--the 4th was his high point of creativity...the 9th although a defiance of what was expected was in many ways not original, ammusing for sure, but not original.

[wbaker7]

i might add i didnt say that DS never challanged the Soviet regime again after 4th/Lady Mac. I said in a later comment Babi Yar also upset the authorities. What I did say was that the edge of originality in his early career was blunted Stalin and Co. -- doesnt mean he didnt produce good work, doesnt mean he wasnt brilliant, doesnt mean he isnt one of my favs, doesnt mean he didnt challenge the regime from time to time. All it means is that he wasnt part of the leading edge in music any more

[shamrock929292]

That's an interesting point - for a symphony supposed to celebrate the winning of a war, it's hardly glorious and triumphant. It must have been sarcastic

[wbaker7]

actually i was quoting harold schonberg--many years the NY Times crit. but he didnt add the slowly part. I cant say enough D.S. did some really great music until the day he died and much of it I love, but I dont see any that had genius written all over it like the 4th. Look he isnt the first to slide after a wham bam debut (more or less debut) Some of Copland's early work look very much like he gonna be one of the great avant garde composers and then...slide into lovely but conventional music

[FungoBoy]

before the fall of stalin, the other symphonies were put off for a while as unpublished, meaning that they were not interfered in the making by the state(it would've got published if it did) also, many of the later symphonies enraged stalin, so why would the state support something like that? i believe that last symphonies were composed after stalins/his gov. 's demise. so state interference doesn't make sense there

[wbaker7]

right, stalin died in 53 (same say as Prokofiev-poor Prokofiev no one noticed cause Stalin died on same day) that is why i said state interfernce with DS not just Stalin. true there was a period of liberalization under Krushchev but that was replaced by mid 60s with a neo Stalinist Brezhnev. Now was there further attacks on DS latter years--you bet. Look at the hostility that was directed at him over his Babi Yar symphony (cause he based on Hebrew themes etc)

[wbaker7]

there was for example intense pressure on DS to withdraw his Babi Yar symphony or at least modify it (ie. make it less Jewish--it was politically incorrect in Soviet regime to only speak of the Hollocaust without the obliatory references to Soviet suffering in the war and I believe the memorial at Babi Yar did not even mention that the victims were Jewish which obviously offended DS) he could resist it unlike the time of the 4th/Lady Mac cuz he was so big by then. But the pressure was real,

[wbaker7]

but anyways your point seems to be that many of the themes of DS latter symphony existed in the 4th or earlier and were still present in latter years after for example he "apologized" for his supposed bourgeois deviance in the 4th/Lady Mac (offical title of the 5th is an apology from a Soviet artist)--i dont disagre; what i said that they had been conventionalized after the 4th--they lost their orignality...they were packaged to met the standards of the Soviet state

[GregHales]

not bad conducting for a beginner...lol

seriously I wonder how often he has conducted this work. It would be interesting to see him do this work with Philly or Boston. NHK sounds pretty good.

[ffmandal]

Viva Dutoit!!!