Search - Mikhail Davidov, Dmitry Shostakovich, Oleg Caetani :: Shostakovich The Complete Symphonies [Hybrid SACD]

A Very Different Take on Shostakovich

Laurance Maney | Vermont, USA | 01/03/2007

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Sets of the complete Shostakovich symphonies are not lacking certainly but the new Caetani set takes its place among the few that are worth owning. Having owned at various times the complete Shostakovich symphonies by Haitink, Jansons, Barshai, Rostropovich and Rozhdestvensky and countless individual performances by Bernstein, Rowicki, Skrowaczewski, Inbal, Andrew Davis, Ancerl, Chung, Previn, Ormandy and others including a few by Gergiev (briefly), Caetani's and Jansons' cycles are to me the most satisfying yet with the Caetani marginally better. This opinion will certainly be seen as heretical by those who revere the cycles by Barshai and Rostropovich, but that is at it should be. For individual recordings of Shostakovich symphonies my favorites are Rowicki and Jansons (BBC Welsh Orchestra) in #1; Ormandy, Previn and Chung in #4; Bernstein, Skrowaczewski and Rowicki in #5; Chung, Jansons and Bernstein in #6; Bernstein/Chicago and the Jansons/Concertgebouw in #7; Rozhdestvensky and Previn in #8; Bernstein & Jansons in #9; Andrew Davis, Jansons, de Preist & Skrowaczewski in #10: Jansons in #11, etc - yet there are none of the above that I find significantly better or at all better than Caetani's reading of the same symphony and in some instances I prefer his reading to any other I've heard - #6, #11, #12 - for example. This may all change when and if Jansons rethinks the entire Shostakovich symphonic canon with the Concertgebouw - compare for example his St. Petersburg #7 on EMI with his recent, near Mahlerian #7 with the Concertgebouw - but it may not given that the aubible influence of Mahler on Shostakovich is one of the high points of Caetani's readings."

Caetani: Complete Shostakovich Syms: Brilliant, Funny, Etche

Dan Fee | Berkeley, CA USA | 01/13/2007

(5 out of 5 stars)

"The complete recorded set of any composer's works runs risks.



On the plus side, we may get a chance to hear a discerning musical mind with a deep heart as the performer approaches the mind and heart of the composer. Assuming sufficiently high level musical capacities, this encounter may strike sparks off the anvil of the effort on which the precious metals of the music is laid out - for performer plus composer - plus for us as listeners. One assumes that almost any performer who bothers to attempt the whole of a composer's output must be engaged in a labor of love, or why else bother?



On the minus side, we may grow tired of hearing too much of the same interpretative approach, before we have finished ticking off the performance list. What sounds discerning and interesting in one or a few of the works may start to reveal subtle limits and shallows as work after work is given.



At best, complete performance series have been powerful and revelatory. Not for nothing did Artur Schnabel get away with playing all the Beethoven piano sonatas as a recital cycle. Hearing yet again how the composer changed and survived and grew, well that may help us change and survive and grow, too. Reaching for such great compass probably works best for the composers who were also great humans - but then, isn't that part of why we still play and still listen?



Here we meet a conductor, a young Italian orchestra of considerable gifts and reputation, the gnarly and substantial composer who managed to write music equal to a profoundly complicated life in a crazy-making political and cultural situation, and ourselves as we listen.



First off. The multichannel super audio sound is all that high resolution recording is supposed to be. There is probably little lacking in these full-frequency carriers, even if you are playing the regular red book stereo CD layer of these discs; but the SACD multiple channels do what they are increasingly doing these days - showing us what 16-bit and two channels lack. There is nothing thin or brash or harsh or flat about the sound, then. These are live recordings, and the audience's applause at the end of each symphony will remind you of that - but otherwise the audience is attentive and unobtrusive - so that perhaps their rapt attention will help inspire your own as you listen.



Given the color and parry and dash of Shostakovich's orchestrations, the superaudio sound matters because the musical textures are so quicksilver. In a few brief moments one may find the band going from full tilt exultation or complaint, to strange chamber-textured episodes which almost seem to float disembodied like those human dissociative experiences triggered by battle stress or interrogation under duress, threat, and torture. Sudden musical openings disclose just that human mind and heart that is no longer supposed to exist among the battled weary and the tortured detainees, usually but not always via melody steeped in Russian folk harmonies (tweaked by sharply anguished or witty reminiscences of musical modernity - Stravinsky, Mahler, Bartok, jazz).



This is a lot to take in, musically speaking. Having state of the art high resolution sound, speaking across multiple channels, surely helps.



The Russian roots that inform these performances are not obvious, not worn on the sleeves of our available information.



Take the conductor, Oleg Caetani, for starters.



He is the son of famed Russian conductor, Igor Markevitch. But he doesn't trade on his father's fame or name, preferring to use his maternal family. After starting his studies in Rome, he finished up at the St. Petersburg conservator where he let himself steep in the great Russian musical traditions flowing from the likes of Yevgeny Mravinsky. One mentor was the founder of the Moscow Philharmonic, Kyril Kondrashin. Both Mravsinky and Kondrashin premiered new symphonies by the composer.



Winning the Karajan competition at the age of 26 years helped bring Caetani to wider attention. No less a figure than Nadia Boulanger mentored him, and helped talk him up among world-class musical circles.



None of this charged heritage screams too loud on the surface. Yet, nevertheless, Maestro Caetani seems to be bringing all of this complex Russian-Italian-French heritage to his way with the composer. The first impression is a rock-solid, precipitous façade of tremendous technical brilliance for all of these symphonies. Add in a remarkable sense of the deeps beneath all the obvious skin of things we live, and live through - sometimes fierce, sometimes sensuous, sometimes self-mocking. The maestro and his players freely apply lavish doses of unstinting musical attention to all the small musical and expressive details, and in the end, the band in Milan holds its own grip on Shostakovich, letting details and flow build up to large, shattering musical symphonic gestures.



Something of the relentless exactitude for which we justly honored the great Italian conductor, Toscanini, has also come to rest in this new, young Italian orchestra in Milan, perhaps helped along by Ricardo Chailly's leadership as music director since 1999. If you think of their namesake, Giuseppe Verdi, then, think about Verdi as played under Toscanini. Founded by Russian exile conductor, Vladimir Delman, the band has its own real heritage and history of true Russian roots.



I wanted to like the latest SACD series in progress from Rostropovich/LSO. But what may well be working in those live London performances often seems misshapen and flabby, later in high resolution sound. The almost imperceptible start of his Symphony 11, for example, might have gained traction in the hall, but it drifts, just out of reach, via my home speakers.



The Shostakovich symphonies are so wide, so kaleidoscopic in their manifestations that I haven't finished making friends with all of them. Yet. Like Mahler, the whole series of fifteen takes some listener's work, some due amount of time.



Caetani and players do well in the ones I already know. I look forward to the others. Five star-sapphires, then."

A Great Shostakovich Cycle

Scirel | Rochester, NY | 05/21/2009

(5 out of 5 stars)

"First off, it is agreed that the sonics in this series is second to none. These betray simply stunning engineering - the sound is vivid and detailed and spacious at the same time - bravo to the recording team!



But now the performances...



Are these musicians as good as those of the arguably-best-in-the-world Concertgebouwians? Well, no (that is why they are considered the best in the world). But they are certainly up to the task. Yes, you may hear a few off-timed instrumental entries and such, but that actually, to my ears, adds to the charm of live recordings a bit. But, these are very emotional readings with a nod to the fun side (hey - they are Italians, are they not?). Very energetic, with a strongly visceral rhythmic drive - the one element that really makes or breaks a Shostakovich symphony! I have felt like getting up and cheering along with the crowd after every one of these performances - it is very difficult to not get grabbed by them. Highly recommended!"