Shostakovich - Chamber Symphony; Schnittke - Concerto for Piano and Strings [Hybrid SACD] [SACD]

The Shostakovich is his most played quartet (the 8th) in this string transcription by Rudolph Barshai. I have Barshai’s own performance on DG as well as a couple of recordings of the string quartet original and it says a lot that this performance stacks up well against the Barshai. Just as an aside, the orchestra on this disc, the Moscow Chamber Orchestra, is the body Barshai originally developed the transcription for. Naturally, the quartet version itself has more astringency and so more intimate menace, but the transcription beings out the hope of the last movement even more successfully than many recordings of the original quartet.

Here, the excellent (pure DSD) recorded sound helps that. It’s closely recorded but not too close, in an acoustic just on the warm side of neutral. The stereo separation and sound stage are good. The rear channels don’t contribute a great deal but add a little extra “presence”.

Things change a bit with the less familiar Schnittke piano concerto, another masterwork, but one perhaps less accessible than the quartet/chamber symphony. The performance is exemplary (especially that of Orbelian who plays the difficult piano solo role as well as conducting) and the recording again very good, but I have a “but…” and it’s that whilst the orchestral perspective of the Shostakovich is retained, the piano is recorded so closely that the relationship between it and the rest of the orchestra (particularly the strings as they play the almost-Tchaikovsky theme that almost emerges in the first movement) is thrown out of balance. Yes, parts of the concerto are meant to be hectoring, insistent and claustrophobic and yes, the piano’s reverberation and attack is meant to generate a lot of that, but here it’s just too heavy: there’s never really a contest between the piano and the orchestra, just a mismatch. When the piano contributes to the brooding communion that marks the moderato movement, the balance between forces is better.

Having said that, it’s still a pretty impressive recording. Just a note, - the closeness of the piano means that the reverberation added by the rear channels is almost too much and I found the stereo SACD layer more rewarding to listen to than the M/C layer in this piece.

I’d have been happy to have this disc, issues of balance aside, for full price, but would have complained of short measure at 47 minutes. However, at the £4 I paid for it, it’s a steal.