Shostakovich: Symphony No. 7 (Live)

Album review

Shostakovich's Symphony No. 7 in C major, Op. 60 ("Leningrad") was composed in the midst of the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union and was broadcast on loudspeakers in the starving, besieged city of Leningrad. It was a sort of poster work for Soviet-American cooperation during the war, landing Shostakovich on the cover of Time and serving as a representation of Russian determination. In this reading by the late Kurt Masur (whose ongoing influence was shown by his appearance in a Google Doodle, in the U.S. as well as Germany, in 2018) and the London Philharmonic, recorded live in 2003, it's a somewhat different work from the one heard from most conductors: more Mahler and less Shostakovich, perhaps, with the unforgettable long march into war in the first movement not so much displacing the opening material as seeming to be a natural extension of it, and an overall tone that's dark rather than inspiring. Sample the chilly wind chorale at the beginning of the slow movement. To pull this off, Masur needs a percussion section that will rally to the cause, and he gets it: the long march trajectory in the opening movement doesn't miss a beat. The LPO strings are lively and edgy, and the live Southbank Centre sound is impressively clear and close-up. Not the last word on the Shostakovich Seventh, surely, but a worthy reading that merits reissue (or, in fact, initial issue).
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