by Ben Hogwood. Photo of Mstislav Rostropvich in 1959 by RIA Novosti archive, courtesy of Wikipedia
On this day in 1959 the premiere took place in Leningrad of Shostakovich‘s Cello Concerto no.1. The soloist was Mstislav Rostropovich, to whom the concerto was dedicated. Here he is as soloist, an indomitable force:
Published post no.3,038 – Sunday 4 October 2026
Tor Lind (bass), Kenny Staškus Larsen (flute), Allan Sjølin, Jesper Sivebaek (balalaikas), Edward Stewart (guitar) (all soloists in The Shot); Lars Notto Birkeland (organ, The Nose); Christian Enarsson (piano, The Human Comedy); Malmő Opera Chorus and Orchestra / Mark Fitz-Gerald
Shostakovich
The Shot – incidental music, Op.24 (1929)
The Human Comedy – incidental music, Op. 37 (1933-4)
The Nose, Op. 15 – appendix (1927-8)
The Vyborg Side, Op. 50 – March of the Arnachists (1938)
Naxos 8.574590 [56’42’’]
Russian text & English translation included
Producer Sean Lewis
Recorded 5-7 March at Opera House, Malmő and 4 April 2024 at Fagerborg Church, Oslo (The Nose)
Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse
What’s the story?
Naxos continues its ground-breaking series devoted to Shostakovich’s film and theatre scores, given with conviction by the Malmö Opera Orchestra and authoritatively conducted by Mark Fitz-Gerald, who has edited and often reconstructed these pieces from their surviving sources.
What’s the music like?
It is all too easily overlooked that, prior to being one of the leading composers of symphonies and string quartets from the 20th century, Shostakovich became established primarily through music for the theatre and cinema; in the process, he frequently transferred musical ideas from one medium to the other. The present release features the complete incidental music from two of his most ambitious such undertakings, along with hitherto unknown passages from his first opera and an item from one of his film scores – much of this material recorded for the first time.
Shostakovich’s first assignment for Leningrad-based TRAM (Theatre of Working Youth), his incidental music for Aleksandr Bezymensky’s verse-drama The Shot had a fraught rehearsal process prior to its relatively successful first-run. Few of the mainly brief numbers survived intact but the outcome, as reconstructed from piano sketches, is a lively if not overly anarchic score – highlights being the Mussorgskian pastiche ‘Workers’ Song of Victory’ (track 1) and the poignant ‘Dun’dya’s Lament’ (16) with its guitar part deftly restored by Edward Stewart.
Some five years on and the experimental zeal of Soviet theatre had largely evaporated, hence the music for Moscow-based Vakhtangov Theatre’s production The Human Comedy. Adapted by Pavel Sukhotin from Honoré de Balzac’s epic, its essence seems one of nostalgia for things past – typified by the theme, nominally evoking Paris, which Shostakovich threads across his half-hour score. Complementing this are more animated or even uproarious numbers, several of which found their way into those Ballet Suites latterly assembled in Stalin’s twilight years.
The programme is rounded out, firstly, with three fragments from The Nose – the undoubted masterpiece of Shostakovich’s radical years. Taken from each of its acts, they pursue musical directions likely impractical in a theatrical context; though what was intended as an overture to Act Three (41) could still make its way as a scintillating encore. Finally, the ‘March of the Anarchists’ (43) from the film The Vyborg Side: reconstructed from its original soundtrack, it finds the composer remodelling music from Weill’s The Threepenny Opera in his own image.
Do the performances work?
Pretty much throughout – accepting, of course, the fragmentary nature of the two main works as determined by their function. In particular, the five-movement suite assembled – not by the composer – from The Human Comedy (and recorded by Edward Serov with the St Petersburg Chamber Orchestra for Melodiya) brings together various of those individual pieces to more cohesive overall effect. Not that the present performances are at all wanting in expertise and conviction, making for an album which is a necessary listen for all admirers of this composer.
Is it recommended?
Very much so. The booklet features detailed notes from no less than Gerard McBurney, with a brief contextual note by Fitz-Gerald. Hopefully there will be further such releases from this source, and not forgetting that several of Shostakovich’s film scores have still to be recorded.
Listen / Buy
You can hear excerpts from the album and explore purchase options at the Naxos website, or you can listen to the album on Tidal. Click to read more about Mark Fitz-Gerald’s recordings for Naxos, the Malmő Opera Orchestra and the Shostakovich Centre.
Published post no.2,792 – Sunday 8 February 2026
Cuarteto Casals [Abel Tomàs, Vera Martínez-Mehner (violins), Cristina Cordero Beltrán (viola), Arnau Tomàs (cello)]
J.S. Bach Art of Fugue BWV1080: Contrapunctus 1, 4, 6 & 9 (1742, rev.1748-9)
Turina La oración del torero Op.34 (1925)
Shostakovich String Quartet no.3 in F major Op.73 (1946)
Wigmore Hall, London
Monday 12 January 2026, 1pm
Reviewed by Ben Hogwood
Cuarteto Casals began this BBC Radio 3 Lunchtime Concert with a quartet of movements from The Art of Fugue, Johann Sebastian Bach’s four-part masterpiece of musical counterpoint. The collection has that rare quality of being able to combine technical prowess and emotional substance, and these were evident right from the outset. Initially plaintive, Contrapunctus 1 grew in scope and stature, though while three of the quartet opted against vibrato cellist Arnau Tomàs did not, meaning his instrument was more rounded in tone. A convincing Contrapunctus 4 featured lively exchanges, while Contrapunctus 6 enjoyed the dotted rhythms redolent of a French ‘ouverture’. Finally Contrapunctus 9 was a light-footed dance, its slower theme commendably clear towards the end.
Vera Martínez-Mehner then swapped with Abel Tomàs to assume first violin duties for Joaquin Turina’s chamber tone poem La oración del torero. This vivid account of bullfighters praying for their lives before a fiesta was written in the wake of a scene witnessed by the composer, observng the toreadors ‘backstage’ in the chapel. Martínez-Mehner and Cristina Cordero Beltrán, perhaps unwittingly, were ironically clad in red for a performance that turned up the temperature a good 20 degrees inside the Wigmore Hall. Their highly descriptive account featured castanet evocations that were on point and searching solos that led to a radiant concluding section. Turina’s chamber music is rarely heard in the concert hall, and while this performance revealed a healthy debt to Debussy’s string quartet in particular, it showed off an attractive melodic style. On this evidence it would be rewarding to hear the composer’s string quartets and piano-based chamber music much more frequently.
The temperature cooled notably for the Shostakovich, though here again the quartet were able to use the extremes of their dynamic range. With the String Quartet no.3 closely attuned to the end of the Second World War, it was difficult not to think of telling parallels with the current situation in Russia and Ukraine, evident on every page. The songful melody of Martínez-Mehner’s opening tune cast initial warmth, but this soon dissipated, the quartet’s confidential asides drawing a notably hushed response from the Wigmore Hall audience.
Parallels with Shostakovich’s Eighth Symphony, completed just three years earlier, were revealed – the heavy-set viola tread of the second movement recalling its scherzo, while the solemn fourth movement Passacaglia, placed as in the symphony, found an equivalent emptiness, nowhere more so than in the stricken unison from viola and cello towards the end.
Yet there was hope, as the questioning finale struck a more positive tone in spite of heavy irony, and a cold dread as the Passacaglia music reappeared. The music hung in a still suspension through the coda, in only the way Shostakovich can, revealing answers that were hard to come by while peace and dread co-existed in equal measure. Silence followed, and there was understandably no encore.
Listen
You can listen to this concert on BBC Sounds, until 11 February. Meanwhile click here to listen to a playlist of the works in this concert on Tidal, with the J.S. Bach and Shostakovich recorded by the Cuarteto Casals themselves.
Published post no.2,766 – Tuesday 13 January 2026
Helena Juntunen (soprano), City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra / Osmo Vänskä (above)
Sibelius
Karelia Suite Op.11 (1893)
Songs – Höstkväll Op.38/1 (1903, orch. 1904); Hertig Magnus Op.57/6 (1909, orch. 1912); Våren flyktar hastigt Op.13/4 (1891, orch. 1913)
The Bard Op.64 (1913)
Luonnotar Op.70 (1913)
Shostakovich
Symphony no.15 in A major Op.141 (1970-71)
Symphony Hall, Birmingham
Wednesday 19 November 2025
Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse Pictures (c) Jonathan Ferro
Finnish conductor Osmo Vänskä makes relatively UK appearances these days such that this evening’s concert with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra was to be anticipated, given the never less than intriguing juxtaposition of works from Sibelius and Shostakovich.
It now appears less frequently on programmes than half a century ago, but Karelia Suite finds Sibelius at his most uninhibited and Vänskä responded accordingly – whether the simmering motion of its Intermezzo or the pulsating activity of its Alla Marcia; its Ballade distilling the keenest atmosphere with Rachel Pankhurst making the most of her plaintive solo. Harpist Karherine Thomas was similarly attuned to her almost obligato role in The Bard, a tone poem whose sombre understatement hardly prepares one for the surging emotion towards its climax.
Elsewhere in this half it was Helena Juntunen (above) who stole the show with her judicious selection of Sibelius songs. That almost all these are settings of Swedish texts reflects an introspective Romanticism often overlooked in his output and Juntunen brought out the stark imagining of Autumn Evening then restless aspiration of Baron Magnus as potently as the ecstatic yearning of Spring is Flying. Her swapping sophisticated gown for traditional dress may have pointed up stylistic differences with Luonnotar, but it also underlined the inimitability of this setting from Finnish national epic the Kalevala. Birmingham audiences had been spoiled by hearing Anu Komsi in the piece, but Juntunen was no less inside music whose extremes of timbre or texture result in as heady a culmination then as spellbinding a conclusion as any in Sibelius.
Hard now to recall a time when Shostakovich’s 15th Symphony was believed too inscrutable for wider appreciation, rather than that masterly reassessment of Classical symphonism it is. Vänskä brooked no compromise in an initial Allegretto not without its technical mishaps, for all its sardonic and even scabrous humour came over unimpeded, but it was with the Adagio this performance wholly found its stride. As enhanced by eloquent contributions from cellist Eduardo Vassallo then trombonist Richard Watkin, this was palpably well sustained through to a climax shot through with a defiance borne of desperation, before retreating back into its initial numbness. Continuing directly, the ensuing Allegretto was an intermezzo no less acute in its expression and not least for the way solo instruments melded so deftly with percussion.
Vänskä did not make the mistake of rendering the finale an Adagio, such as holds good only with its portentous introduction. The main Allegretto was persuasively handled – broadening marginally for a central passacaglia builds stealthily if inevitably to a climax corrosive in its dissonance, before retracing its thematic steps towards a coda which evokes the notion of the ‘unbearable lightness of being’ more completely than any other music. Here, also, there was no mistaking the CBSO’s collective focus in bringing this totemic work to its deathless close.
Shostakovich 15 does not lack for probing or memorable readings these days and, if tonight’s did not answer all its questions, Vänskä nevertheless ensured this piece left its mark on what was a commendably full house, and which set the seal on a flawed while memorable concert.
For more information on the 2025-26 season head to the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra website. Click on the names to read more about soloist Helena Juntunen and conductor Osmo Vänskä
Published post no.2,727 – Sunday 23 November 2025
by Ben Hogwood
Today marks 70 years since the first performance of a Shostakovich masterpiece. The Violin Concerto no.1 in A minor Op.77/99 received its premiere at the hands of its dedicatee, David Oistrakh, with the Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Yevgeny Mravinsky.
Here it is from one of its most passionate recent exponents, Maxim Vengerov taking the solo part with the Novosibirsk State Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Thomas Sanderling:
Published post no.2,702 – Wednesday 29 October 2025
