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| Page 2 | Music Page - CD | February 2007 |
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Shostakivich • The Golden Age (Complete Ballet) • Royal Scottish National Orchestra • José Serebrier $ 2-CD set • Naxos 8.570217-18 • 02:23:43
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By Alidë Kohlhaas In 2006 Dmitry Shostakovich would have been 100 years old. One would have thought that this would have brought about an outpouring of his music on the radio and in the print media. Unfortunately, a more popular composer, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, celebrated his 250th birthday in the same year, and so Mr. Shostakovich was pushed pretty well aside. Only if one looked or listened hard, did one read about him or come to hear his music in a celebratory format. Fortunately, I am able to review here a fine recording of his ballet, The Golden Age, Op. 22 by the Royal Scottish National Orchestra on the Naxos label. The conductor is José Serebrier, who has won numerous awards as composer and also a conductor in his long career. Among his greatest achievements is an outstanding recording of Charles Ives' Fourth Symphony, a symphony that even the great Leopold Stokowski could only handle with two assistant conductors. Serebrier's recordings of the Mendelssohn symphonies with the Scottish National Orchestra won him the Music Retailers Association Award for best orchestral recording of the year in 1991. He has many Grammy nominations to his name and a few wins as well. On this 2-CD set of Shostakovich's ballet, Serebrier proves that he has a perfect understanding of the composer's intend. It is a powerful presentation by a well-coördinated orchestra that responds well to the dramatic concept of the ballet music. At the same time, it frees the music from the confines of the Soviet-style story, which to us would not be very appealing; it lets the music live on its own. To listen to this recording, no visuals are required. One can sense the mood of the work, which is sometimes satirical, mocking, and at the same time we sense the composer's appreciation of newly discovered music while living outside the Soviet Union in the 1920s. Of course, he returned, and premiered the work in 1930 at the State Academy Theater in Leningrad. Two events contributed to the ballet's short run of just 10 performances. Shostakovich and the choreographer, Vasily Vainonen, were unable to agree on the correlation between music and dance. The resulting dissonance between music and dance allowed the anti-Shostakovich forces in the Soviet Union to shoot the work down, led with blazing guns by the Russian Association of Proletarian Musicians. The ballet is imbued with jazz and other popular music from the 'decadent' West, there is waltz music, a tango, foxtrot and Charleston that evoke the supposed 'subversion' of the proletariat by such music. It is a tongue-in-cheek work. While its original theme of a Soviet soccer team playing in the West during an industrial exhibition, and the perils the team encounters there, should have pleased the reactionary forces at home, Shostakovich obviously wasn't quite able to fool the 'Proletarian Musicians Association'. By the way, there is a wonderful variation of 'Tea for Two' that serves as a well-placed and fetching entr' acte at the beginning of Act III.
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It is too bad that Shostakovich's ballets—he has written three in all—are the least known of his music. So it is
wonderful to be able to listen to a recording of the original score as the
composer wrote The Golden Age. The expressive music makes great listening.
True, in this Naxos recording there are moments when one gets a feeling that
the fast pace will unravel the music, but not in Serebier's hands. He is a
master at bringing difficult work alive. Nothing is compromised and the
music and the playing remain focused at all times.