
This outstanding performance enjoys excellent sonics from the Bavarian Radio engineers, lacking only that last bit of vividness that would have given an extra bite
The Staatskapelle Dresden was, and probably still is, Germany’s greatest orchestra overall, the one with the most distinctive sound, the grandest historical tradition, and the
Mikhail Pletnev’s Shostakovich Symphony No. 11 excels beyond the much-hyped Rostropovich version on LSO Live, which suffers from a deadening slow, heavy tread. Pletnev’s urgent
This excellent performance succeeds in recapturing the “glory days” (musically speaking) of Kondrashin and Mravinsky. It may be true that the Milan orchestra doesn’t play
The Execution of Stepan Razin is a sort of sequel to the 13th Symphony, in that it sets a poem by Yevtushenko and even shares
This coupling duplicates an excellent Vengerov/Rostropovich disc on Warner, and it couldn’t be more different. The Russians are slower, heavier, but also more manic in
This disc duplicates Testament SBT 1029, save for the addition of an extra Shostakovich Prelude and Fugue (No. 24) for filler’s sake. Collectors who missed
This uncommon pairing presents Gennady Rozhdestvensky’s rather stern rendition of Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 1 that captures the work’s bitter irony and Mussorgskian pensiveness but downplays
Han-Na Chang’s stunning recording of Prokofiev’s Symphony-Concerto for cello and orchestra led me to expect great things of her Shostakovich, and I was not disappointed.
No one tears into the comparatively unpopular Shostakovich Twelfth Symphony with the intensity of Mravinsky and his (then) Leningraders; but as Haitink does in his