Deutsche Grammophon “Discovers” Shostakovich

This coming Friday Deutsche Grammophon will mark the 50th anniversary of the death of Dmitri Shostakovich with the release of a new album, whose full title is Shostakovich Discoveries: World Premiere Recordings & Rarities. As most readers will expect, Amazon.com has already created a Web page for processing pre-orders. To be fair, my own interest in Shostakovich has been, at best, mixed; but the prospect of encountering “75 minutes of largely unknown music” (to quote from the advance material I received) was hard to resist!

In spite of any skepticism, I found it difficult to resist the five-CD box of recordings of Dmitri Shostakovich at the piano released by the Russian Melodiya label in October of 2019. This offered two CDs of solo piano music, two of chamber music, and one with excerpts from both the Opus 79 From Jewish Folk Poetry song cycle and a two-piano arrangement of the Opus 93 (tenth) symphony in E minor. The better part of Discoveries also involves a generous share of solo piano music performed by Daniil Trifonov, Daniel Ciobanu, and Yulianna Avdeeva. Thomas Sanderling conducts the Staatskapelle Dresden in three fragments from the Opus 15 opera The Nose. The entire album is framed by vocal selections performed by two Russian basses, Alexei Mochalov and Alexander Roslavets. That leaves an impromptu movement for viola and piano and Levon Atovmyan’s arrangement for five pieces for two violins and piano led by violinist Gidon Kremer.

Once again, I am reminded of the motto for the Sunday edition of The New York Times: “You don’t have to read it all, but it’s good to know it’s all there!” From my own personal point of view, none of the “discoveries” on this album had much impact on my own feelings about Shostakovich’s music. Nevertheless, to be fair, my interest has been at its strongest where the Opus 87 set of 24 preludes and fugues is concerned; and, while I was certainly interested in encountering three new fugues on this new release, they almost seem to have come across as exercises to prepare for later efforts.

from the booklet for Shostakovich Discoveries

All of the selections on this album were first performed at the International Shostakovich Festival Gohrisch. The accompanying booklet includes a statement by the composer’s widow, Irina Shostakovich, acknowledging the efforts of musicologist Olga Digonskaya. There is also an informative essay by Jan Brachmann in both the original German and English translation. Finally, I suspect that many readers will appreciate the above photograph of Shostakovich with his cat on his right shoulder!