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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
14 of 14 people found the following review helpful
Format:Audio CD|Amazon Verified Purchase
This disc is a re-issue of a previous Marco Polo release and will no doubt reach a wider following in its bargain-price niche.
Any understanding of Shostakovich as a composer has to take into account his film music, which comprised a considerable swathe of his output from 1929-1970.He appears to have had an ambivalent attitude towards this work: no doubt his artistic instincts baulked at having to produce heroic soviet propaganda music, yet at the same time he noted that the discipline of producing film scores to an exacting timescale, together with the opportunities it afforded to experiment in orchestration sharpened his compositional skills and directly influenced his symphonic music.
What we have on this disc is the more-or-less complete score for 'The Fall of Berlin', together with the extended film suite from 'The Unforgettable Year 1919': the former composed under Stalinist strictures, idolising the 'great leader', the latter one of his first scores after the dictator's death.
The score for 'The Fall of Berlin' has been carefully reconstructed by the swiss conductor Adriano (I generally distrust any musician who decides they wish to be known by one name, but he stands or falls by his work, and I can't quibble here). The music was published shortly after release, but arrangents by other hands of various sections have now been restored to their original condition. What we have here is the complete score apart from any interpolations by other composers which were used in the the film.
If you're expecting deeply significant music on a par with, for example, the Eight Symphony, you're in for disappointment: however, if you take on board that this is bright shiny music intended to stir the spirits of soviet film-goers you will find that it fulfils its brief admirably. It doesn't take its task too seriously either- a military march used in the film for a presentation to Hitler is a perfectly encapsulated drop of deflating musical pastiche.
Similarly, the suite from 'The Unforgetttable Year 1919' shows craftsmanship of a high order: this isn't 'intellectual' music but, as is required, immediately and attractively communicative.It even contains a 'mini-concerto'for piano and orchestra, with more than a nod towards Richard Addinsell's Warsaw Concerto: This has achieved an independent concert life, with a slightly different ending, as 'The Assault on Beautiful Gorky' but it's good to hear'The Assault on the Red Hill'in its intended musical context. Thoroughly enjoyable music.
The Moscow Symphony Orchestra plays with conviction, and this release is a welcome addition to the recorded repertoire.
Any understanding of Shostakovich as a composer has to take into account his film music, which comprised a considerable swathe of his output from 1929-1970.He appears to have had an ambivalent attitude towards this work: no doubt his artistic instincts baulked at having to produce heroic soviet propaganda music, yet at the same time he noted that the discipline of producing film scores to an exacting timescale, together with the opportunities it afforded to experiment in orchestration sharpened his compositional skills and directly influenced his symphonic music.
What we have on this disc is the more-or-less complete score for 'The Fall of Berlin', together with the extended film suite from 'The Unforgettable Year 1919': the former composed under Stalinist strictures, idolising the 'great leader', the latter one of his first scores after the dictator's death.
The score for 'The Fall of Berlin' has been carefully reconstructed by the swiss conductor Adriano (I generally distrust any musician who decides they wish to be known by one name, but he stands or falls by his work, and I can't quibble here). The music was published shortly after release, but arrangents by other hands of various sections have now been restored to their original condition. What we have here is the complete score apart from any interpolations by other composers which were used in the the film.
If you're expecting deeply significant music on a par with, for example, the Eight Symphony, you're in for disappointment: however, if you take on board that this is bright shiny music intended to stir the spirits of soviet film-goers you will find that it fulfils its brief admirably. It doesn't take its task too seriously either- a military march used in the film for a presentation to Hitler is a perfectly encapsulated drop of deflating musical pastiche.
Similarly, the suite from 'The Unforgetttable Year 1919' shows craftsmanship of a high order: this isn't 'intellectual' music but, as is required, immediately and attractively communicative.It even contains a 'mini-concerto'for piano and orchestra, with more than a nod towards Richard Addinsell's Warsaw Concerto: This has achieved an independent concert life, with a slightly different ending, as 'The Assault on Beautiful Gorky' but it's good to hear'The Assault on the Red Hill'in its intended musical context. Thoroughly enjoyable music.
The Moscow Symphony Orchestra plays with conviction, and this release is a welcome addition to the recorded repertoire.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
1 review
22 of 22 people found the following review helpful
Representative selections of Shostakovich film music
7 Feb 2007
Format:Audio CD|Amazon Verified Purchase
Soviet composer Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975) played and composed film music, or music to accompany cinema, from his earliest days as a teen pianist accompanying silent movies. He composed the two scores on this CD -- "The Fall of Berlin" and "The Unforgettable Year 1919" -- in the postwar period after his 1948 denunciation, with Prokofiev and every other good composer in USSR, as a formalist. Film music was a way for Shostakovich to make a payday and to get back to better graces with the official music establishment that demanded "Socialist realism" portrayed in its music.
Both scores accompany movies depicting patriotic portraits of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin. "The Fall of Berlin" represents the Soviet victory over Germany in World War II and "The Unforgettable Year 1919" addresses the civil war in Petrograd in the years following the 1917 revolution. The films date from 1949 and 1951, respectively.
Even though they released this CD in 2000, Naxos labels the recordings the "premiere recording" of "Fall of Berlin" and the "first complete recording" of "The Unforgettable Year 1919". Both were edited by conductor-composer Adriano, a Swizter that goes by one name. He specializes in off the beaten track repertory and has the temperament to be effective in film music. I've heard previous recordings of his and none were as good as this one.
I'd say Adriano's edited version of "The Fall of Berlin" is the more effective of the two on this disk. It is full of major key flag-waving emotions, high minor key drama, and the excitement of battle and victory. Shostakovich's score eschews the glitter of American film music while still retaining the dynamic sweep necessary to create emotions and reflect the visual foundation.
The score has a notable main title and includes thematic material that will remind you of his wartime symphonies in the section titled "Alyosha and Natalia in the field -- Attack." A later section, "Storming Seelov Heights", is very exciting and the final 4-5 of 16 score elements build triumphant noise that concludes appropriatley.
The music for "The Unforgettable Year 1919" is not nearly at such an exalted level of inspiration. The main item, a 7-minute mini-piano concerto called "The Assault on the Red Hill", is Shostakovich making fun of the "Warsaw" concerto. The music is stupifying in its bombast and repitition and does little to mask the composer's cynicism he felt during this period.
While less inspired than "The Fall of Berlin", the 7-part score nonetheless nicely fills out a good sounding 75-minute CD that is well played by the Moscow Symphony Orchestra. Naxos' notes are helpful, as always, and do not include translations of the several sung sections. The DDD sound is very good and exceeds the label's standard.
I've not seen either film although I have witnessed a scene or two from "The Fall of Berlin", notably the penultimate "Stalin at the airport" scene. You can see it on "Shostakovich Against Stalin: The War Symphonies" (ASIN: B000BLBZM0), an outstanding 2006 documentary that details Shostakovich's war symphonies and Stalin's tyranny.
Both scores accompany movies depicting patriotic portraits of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin. "The Fall of Berlin" represents the Soviet victory over Germany in World War II and "The Unforgettable Year 1919" addresses the civil war in Petrograd in the years following the 1917 revolution. The films date from 1949 and 1951, respectively.
Even though they released this CD in 2000, Naxos labels the recordings the "premiere recording" of "Fall of Berlin" and the "first complete recording" of "The Unforgettable Year 1919". Both were edited by conductor-composer Adriano, a Swizter that goes by one name. He specializes in off the beaten track repertory and has the temperament to be effective in film music. I've heard previous recordings of his and none were as good as this one.
I'd say Adriano's edited version of "The Fall of Berlin" is the more effective of the two on this disk. It is full of major key flag-waving emotions, high minor key drama, and the excitement of battle and victory. Shostakovich's score eschews the glitter of American film music while still retaining the dynamic sweep necessary to create emotions and reflect the visual foundation.
The score has a notable main title and includes thematic material that will remind you of his wartime symphonies in the section titled "Alyosha and Natalia in the field -- Attack." A later section, "Storming Seelov Heights", is very exciting and the final 4-5 of 16 score elements build triumphant noise that concludes appropriatley.
The music for "The Unforgettable Year 1919" is not nearly at such an exalted level of inspiration. The main item, a 7-minute mini-piano concerto called "The Assault on the Red Hill", is Shostakovich making fun of the "Warsaw" concerto. The music is stupifying in its bombast and repitition and does little to mask the composer's cynicism he felt during this period.
While less inspired than "The Fall of Berlin", the 7-part score nonetheless nicely fills out a good sounding 75-minute CD that is well played by the Moscow Symphony Orchestra. Naxos' notes are helpful, as always, and do not include translations of the several sung sections. The DDD sound is very good and exceeds the label's standard.
I've not seen either film although I have witnessed a scene or two from "The Fall of Berlin", notably the penultimate "Stalin at the airport" scene. You can see it on "Shostakovich Against Stalin: The War Symphonies" (ASIN: B000BLBZM0), an outstanding 2006 documentary that details Shostakovich's war symphonies and Stalin's tyranny.
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