Shostakovich: Symphony No. 7

Chronique

Debate rolls on about the Shostakovich Symphony No. 7 in C major, Op. 60 ("Leningrad"). Was it really about Leningrad in World War II? It seems to have been started and perhaps planned before the German invasion. Was it really about the Germans? Shostakovich's maybe-amanuensis Solomon Volkov has him saying it was about the city that Stalin destroyed, and Hitler merely finished off. Is the work a towering response to a critical chapter of 20th century life or a bombastic concession to Soviet cultural dictates? The debates simply show the work's continuing vitality, an aspect of which is elegantly captured in this live recording by Gianandrea Noseda, leading the London Symphony Orchestra. The symphony is perhaps the most Mahlerian of Shostakovich's 15, ranging from tragedy to jackbooted thugs to angry satire, but many of its passages seem to show a silent city, living under a sense of foreboding. Noseda demands much of the London Symphony in the work's lengthy quiet passages; these can easily drag, but in his hands, they are incredibly detailed, and the orchestra's wind players respond magnificently. Perhaps the "invasion theme" area in the first movement, moving from music modeled on Ravel's Bolero to a sarcastic reference to Hitler's favorite work, The Merry Widow, has more of a minatory edge elsewhere, in Bernstein or Mravinsky. However, Noseda's accomplishment is considerable, and all the more so inasmuch as he takes the work at a deliberate 74 minutes, without letting it flag. The engineering, too, is very strong; audience noise is stripped out, but an X favor from the excitement of live performance remains.
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