Shostakovich Symphonies Nos 6 & 15 London Symphony Orchestra/Gianandrea Noseda LSO Live LSO 0878 (CD/SACD) 76:48 mins
It’s good to have two of Shostakovich’s eight greatest symphonies together on one album. Odd as it may be to start with 15, I wouldn’t recommend facing both at a single setting: each needs mental and emotional space to digest. It’s certainly true that the swansong is more truly a showcase, in one sense, for some of the world’s best orchestral principals. Starting with Gareth Davies’s quirky flute and Rachel Gough’s truculent bassoon through to the solos of violinist Roman Simovic, cellist David Cohen and trombonist Helen Vollam, and on to select ensembles, the articulation couldn’t be bettered. Gianandrea Noseda is careful to cross every t without ever losing sight of atmosphere and long-term vision.
If the strings at the beginning of the Sixth are less profoundly feral than those of Paavo Järvi’s Estonian Festival Orchestra, there’s more unforgettable work at the heart of the movement from another great flautist, Adam Walker. A steadier-than-usual pace for the first of the two scherzos which follow the lacerating opening Largo means that E flat clarinettist Chi-Yo Mo and colleagues can make every note tell; the coda is more subtle and spooky than any I’ve heard. Again, clarity is the keynote of the final circus romp from hell; you may have heard wilder, but there’s none which drives home with such focus Shostakovich’s genius invention or the way he clothes it. The live recording may not give full string impact, but bass lines are telling, and dryness well suits the skeletal swathes of the 15th.
David Nice
