Vividly recorded, if maybe with a bit more bass oomph needed, Klaus Mäkelä conducts a gripping, time-taken (sixty-seven-minute) account of the Fourth Symphony that is immensely powerful as well as persuasively revealing of the work’s strangeness, volatility, ambiguity, sarcasm, and varied characterisations, the Oslo Philharmonic in top form – technically, musically and personality-wise (impressive solos, such as bassoon and trombone) – confidently in league with its conductor for a compelling and uncompromising performance that has much to impart about the details and dynamics enshrined on the pages and a considered view of what they may mean. The Fifth Symphony appeared when the Fourth was unknown (withdrawn during rehearsals, so as to not further incur Stalin’s ire, the result of his disliking the opera, Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk) and not performed for twenty-five years. If Mäkelä doesn’t quite inhabit the Fifth as he does its predecessor it’s still an intense and biting performance (with greater bass weight but slightly less clarity in upper registers) that avoids any sense of routine with this most-programmed of the composer’s fifteen Symphonies, the slow movement especially melancholy, and the Finale ideally moderated to give the accelerando somewhere to go, albeit subtly; and as for the coda, Mäkelä leans from MOR to massive if not massive/robotic like Masur (LPO) and there is certainly the feeling from Oslo that Shostakovich didn’t mean a note of his supposed response to “just criticism”. Mäkelä also ensures that Symphony 6’s long first movement (Largo) is an emotional disclosure, despairing, becoming chilly and sinister despite a bewitching flute solo (there could be an ominous knock on the door any moment) followed by two shorter fast movements that require agility and the avoidance of glibness, as here, yet allowing duplicitousness; the Finale is circus-like, with Rossini as ringmaster, but things may not be what they seem. Decca 485 4637 (2 CDs).
Klaus Mäkelä and Oslo Philharmonic record Shostakovich’s Symphonies 4, 5 & 6 for Decca.
