Andris Nelsons & Boston Symphony Orchestra - Shostakovich Under Stalin's Shadow: Symphonies Nos. 5, 8 & 9 (2016) [CD Rip]

The Latvian conductor Andris Nelsons came of age in the 1990s and was trained in Russia; he has the music and the emotional content of Shostakovich's symphonies in his DNA. The present double album is the second in a series titled Under Stalin's Shadow and devoted to the music from the middle of Shostakovich's career, when the interference of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin in artistic affairs could easily have cost the composer his neck. The light, cheeky Suite from Hamlet that opens the second CD is a representative, if little-heard, piece in the style Shostakovich explored when Stalin was coming to power in the early 1930s, while the three symphonies embodied differing responses to the totalitarian environment: responses that have continued to resonate in cultures far beyond that of the Soviet Union. The Symphony No. 5 in D minor, Op. 47, was titled "A Soviet artist's creative response to just criticism"; it was, perhaps, a flight into hyper-emotionalism. The Symphony No. 8 in C minor, Op. 65, came like the Symphony No. 7 ("Leningrad") from the heart of the Soviet wartime experience; it was condemned for its violent and inward mode of expression, just as the Soviets were beginning to turn the tide against Hitler. But it explores the psychological state that war leaves. Sample one of the two inner fast movements (CD 2, tracks 9 and 10), nervous in the extreme, both to experience Nelsons' deep grasp of the mood of the work and to marvel at the incredible, almost febrile woodwind work he gets from his new band, the Boston Symphony Orchestra. The Symphony No. 9 in E flat major, Op. 70 that followed was a total reversal, an almost neoclassic work, and Nelsons gives it the proper lightness. These recordings were made live in 2015 in Boston's Symphony Hall, and they have both energy and clarity. Highly recommended Shostakovich that can stand with any British or Continental readings. -- James Manheim