Composer: Dmitri Shostakovich
Orchestra: Singapore Symphony Orchestra
Conductor: Andrew Litton
Format: FLAC (tracks)
Label: BIS
Catalogue: BIS2472
Release: 2022
Size: 1.16 GB
Recovery: +3%
Scan: yes
Suite for Jazz Orchestra No. 1
01. I. Waltz
02. II. Polka
03. III. Foxtrot
Suite from “The Age of Gold”, Op. 22a (1935 Version)
04. I. Introduction
05. II. Adagio
06. III. Polka
07. IV. Dance
Suite from “The Limpid Stream”, Op. 39a (Arr. K. Titarenko for Orchestra)
08. I. Waltz
09. II. Russian Popular Dance
10. III. Gallop
11. IV. Adagio
12. V. Pizzicato
Suite for Variety Orchestra
13. I. March
14. II. Dance No. 1
15. III. Dance No. 2
16. IV. Little Polka
17. V. Lyric Waltz
18. VI. Waltz No. 1
19. VII. Waltz No. 2
20. VIII. Finale
21. Tahiti Trot, Op. 16
Dmitri Shostakovich was the most versatile of composers: popular and serious styles came to him with equal ease and are frequently found together in the same work. In his twenties, before the heavy hand of Soviet officialdom slapped him down in 1936, music of every kind poured out of him: symphonies, operas and full-length ballets but also a great amount of music for film and theatre.
Here Andrew Litton leads the Singapore Symphony Orchestra in a programme which explores this lighter side of a composer who is otherwise often regarded as unrelentingly serious. This recording opens with Suite for Jazz Orchestra No. 1, which Litton conducts from the piano. Consisting of three brief movements, it is the only truly original work in this recording, written in 1934 for a competition aimed at making “Soviet Jazz” more respectable.
The remaining suites are all reworkings of existing music, such as the ballets The Age of Gold – about the adventures of a Soviet football team visiting the decadent West – and The Limpid Stream, portraying a group of entertainers visiting an idyllic collective farm.
The Suite for Variety Orchestra is a compilation that the composer made in the late 1950s from three film scores, a ballet movement and four piano pieces. Closing the programme is Shostakovich’s 1927 orchestration of a Broadway classic, Vincent Youmans’ Tea for Two, which had become a hit under the title “Tahiti Trot”.