First off, if you're wondering about the booklet cover, and thinking 'where did that come from?', i actually made it myself!, the original cover was awful, so i made a better one myself, more on that below, Karajan's Shostakovich 10 is how i originally got to know this work, it was a wonderful moment when the first movement started to make real sense to me, and playing this today i marvelled at the genius of this work, it's a fantastic experience, the sheer depth of the first movement is incredible, there's a real sense of architecture, where Shostakovich can span vast amounts of time [over 50 minutes here], it's one of his greatest compositions.
Herbert Von Karajan was an Austrian Conductor 1908-1989, he almost 'owned' the Berliner Philharmoniker, recording vast loads of works, including full Symphony cycles, he recorded this work in 1982, the front cover is a card i bought from Oxfam, cut to size, folded over and the original booklet inside [stapled], and then using black and white transfers to create the lettering, it's a great visual product, strangely it shows the Earth in orbit over the Earth!, but those gorgeous blues are fantastic, light sky blue at the bottom, but then almost dark to black at the top, i'm proud of the finished product, the lettering is superb, why can't DG make things like this?.
It was the first two movements which were so fantastic, almost the yin and yan of the Symphony, the one huge and serious, the other so short, almost flippant in its anger, it's this second movement that i just can't resist, Shostakovich is the king of 'anger', where he uses brass / percussion in these great forte passages, it's only 4:16 long, but boy, sometimes the tiniest dogs give the most vicious bites!, no messing about from Shostakovich, no silly intro, straight away we're in forte bowing rhythms from the lower strings [0:00+], and the oboe's going berserk [0:06-0:23], and is joined by the flute / piccolo towards the end, and yes Shosty gets his military drummer in on the act [0:23+] to stir things up, and the brass are marvellous at adding real weight [0:48-1:20], the frantic violins comes in [1:22-1:35], the flutes / piccolos really do go crazy [1:35-1:46], and in the midst of it all you can hear a lazy bassoon chug away [1:41-1:45], the great thing about this movement is it's packed to the rafters with such good things, the timpani really make a noise [2:25-2:29], and the brass and violins almost compete [2:31-2:51], but instead of clashing they actually complement one another, .
Here's Dietrich Paredes conducting the second movement on YouTube.
Here's Dietrich Paredes conducting the second movement on YouTube.
