You make good sense, Nick. In the end, though, I'm not that much fascinated by 'messages' in music: I'd rather allow the music to speak to me as music. It's similar to a conversation I had with a Priest who taught me when I was fifteen and considered myself the greatest living German cricketer: he was also the cricket coach. He is now a world-renowned expert on the Johannine Gospel. The conversation was around the way Bach expressed Liturgical texts so wonderfully in his Cantatas. The previous evening I had shown my wife a wonderful YouTube performance of the Christmas Oratorio, the Lutz Bachstiftung project, and said, I wish they hadn't used subtitles to translate the text. In other words, I'm not interested in Religious or Historical gobble de gook, I want to be moved by the music. That makes me sound like a very primitive listener, I know...
My other guide to the Shostakovich I'm interested in is Kurt Sanderling. He never went near 7,11 or 12. Then again, he also didn't conduct the 4th which is fast becoming my favorite Shostakovich Symphony. Regards to you.
For me Shostakovich occupies an almost unique position when it comes to debating the quality/value/greatness of any given work. With any other composer it might be possible to agree a framework of "what is great/first rate" and then apply it to that composer's work. With DSCH I think that is not relevant.
Part of greatness is surely linked to relevance and how well the compositional "brief" is fulfilled. First-rate should not surely only refer to the most complex/most deeply felt works. A ten second jingle for an advert is first rate if everyone remembers the tune and buys the product. By that measure DSCH is remarkably successful in so many fields. Less criticism is levelled at his film scores or jazz suites for example because it is accepted the role they play. But I would argue that the 11th & 12th Symphonies also have a very specific role. The "problem" we have as listeners is that the title "Symphony" gives us expectations - especially in the context of say Nos.10 & 13 which bookend these pieces - that perhaps 11 & 12 do not fulfill. However as agitprop works I think they are remarkably successful. As Western listeners we do not hear/recognise/identify with the popular songs used - especially in No.11 - so we cannot relate to the message implicit in their use. OF COURSE other symphonies within the canon are more musically sophisticated works but I still love 11 & 12 (& 7 too) for the messages - overt or implicit - that they send.....
Hello Lee. I love your review of this Presto re-issue and I commend you for taking the trouble to place this music into its historical context.
I especially loved your point about how a certain Yankee Dude loves Neemi because he DIDN'T do German repertoire, as though recording German music is a kind of 'Sturm und dreck' therefore infra dig enterprise in these modern enlightened times...
As you rightly, in my opinion, point out that when Neemi did record standard repertoire he always proves to be a competent time beater, nothing more.
With regard to the two Shostakovich Symphonies, one can waste many unreclaimable hours discussing the origins, the political climate he wrote this music in, but the bottom line is that like the Leningrad Symphony, numbers 11 and 12 are simply second rate Shostakovich. It's as simple as that...
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