SHOSTAKOVICH

Symphonies No 4 & 11 (DGG B0028595-02)

Shostakovich conceived the Fourth as a kind of aesthetic obstinacy of musical principles. The sheer size of the orchestral forces required—125 musicians—testify to its ‘grandiosomania’ as Shostakovich put it. The music possesses a demonic wilful vitality, often explosive to the point of controlled chaos. As a test of orchestral balance in the midst of explosive contrasts, this music exacts from the Boston Symphony a uniformity of sound and illuminated resonance it once achieved under Koussevitzky. The eminently cinematic score of Symphony No. 11 in G minor might have its forerunner in Tchaikovsky’s Manfred, Producer/engineer Shawn Murphy has a real coup. These are as rousing testaments to the Boston Symphony as I have heard since the heydays of Koussevitzky, Steinberg, and Leinsdorf. Gary Lemco