Boston Symphony Orchestra, Andris Nelsons – Shostakovich: Symphonies Nos. 4 & 11 “The Year 1905” (Live) (2018) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Boston Symphony Orchestra, Andris Nelsons – Shostakovich: Symphonies Nos. 4 & 11 “The Year 1905” (Live) (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 02:07:07 minutes | 2,05 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Deutsche Grammophon (DG)

Clocking in at over an hour for the Fourth, and almost an hour for the Eleventh or “1911”, these are the two longest and fullest of Shostakovich’s symphonies. What’s remarkable is that the Fourth, finished in 1936, was only performed in 1961 – eleven years after the performance of the Eleventh in 1957! It was in 1936 that the poor composer felt a bullet whistle by him, following an infamous article in Pravda, dictated by Stalin: “Chaos in Place of Music”, which torpedoed the opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk: the work was carefully locked away, only to be brought back out once the dictator was dead, buried and comprehensively decomposed. You can see where the composer was coming from! The tone of this Fourth hasn’t the slightest hint of optimism, We hear dark Mahlerian accents, desperate flights and tortured harmonies: not exactly the music of a bright tomorrow. The Eleventh, structured according to a “political” programme, celebrating the revolutionaries of 1905 and the tragic events of Bloody Sunday – when the Russian army fired on a crowd, killing 96 according to official sources and several thousand according to others – with a much more optimistic tone, although we know what optimism means in the world of Shostakovich. The two symphonies were recorded at public concerts, in autumn 2017 and spring 2018 respectively by the Boston Symphony Orchestra and their conductor Andris Nelsons.

Tracklist:

1-1. Boston Symphony Orchestra & Andris Nelsons – Symphony No. 4 in C Minor, Op. 43: 1. Allegretto poco moderato (Live) (14:56)
1-2. Boston Symphony Orchestra & Andris Nelsons – Symphony No. 4 in C Minor, Op. 43: 2. Presto (Live) (11:47)
1-3. Boston Symphony Orchestra & Andris Nelsons – Symphony No. 4 in C Minor, Op. 43: 3. Moderato con moto (Live) (08:24)
1-4. Boston Symphony Orchestra & Andris Nelsons – Symphony No. 4 in C Minor, Op. 43: 4. Largo (Live) (06:51)
1-5. Boston Symphony Orchestra & Andris Nelsons – Symphony No. 4 in C Minor, Op. 43: 5. Allegro (Live) (22:29)
1-6. Boston Symphony Orchestra & Andris Nelsons – Symphony No. 11 in G Minor, Op. 103 “The Year 1905”: 1. The Palace Square (Adagio) (Live) (17:14)
1-7. Boston Symphony Orchestra & Andris Nelsons – Symphony No. 11 in G Minor, Op. 103 “The Year 1905”: 2. The Ninth of January (Allegro – Adagio – Allegro – Adagio) (Live) (18:46)
1-8. Boston Symphony Orchestra & Andris Nelsons – Symphony No. 11 in G Minor, Op. 103 “The Year 1905”: 3. Eternal Memory (Adagio) (Live) (12:27)
1-9. Boston Symphony Orchestra & Andris Nelsons – Symphony No. 11 in G Minor, Op. 103 “The Year 1905”: 4. The Tocsin (Allegro non troppo) (Live) (14:10)

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