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 excellent recordings, Mariss Jansons brings his own combination of precision, seriousness of purpose, and excitement to the proceedings, and the results are quite impressive. He projects the agitation of the first movement without exaggerating its bombast, and the slow movement, one of Shostakovich’s most gravely beautiful, sounds splendid here. Throughout the Bavarian Radio Symphony plays with real virtuosity, and if the closing pages of the finale don’t convince, the fault is as much the composer’s as the conductor’s. Certainly Jansons builds the coda effectively.
The Second Symphony has two advantages over its successor: it’s shorter; and despite the high level of dissonance, it has a rudimentary large-scale form. Jansons plays it as well as anyone, and he also projects quite well the music’s feeling of order doing battle with the forces of chaos. The chorus sings with gusto if not quite revolutionary fervor, but who can blame them? Impressive sonics, as always from the Bavarians, complete a very powerful and compelling release that might win some new friends for the much-maligned Twelfth.
