What about Muradeli's symphony (first of the fourth, may be he did not write second and third).
I never heard Muradeli's symphony. I know his patriotic songs.
What kind of symphonies are they? I think they probably sound like his songs.

I think Leschetizky had many wives. Esipova was his student too. This is not relevant to Schostakovich. I don't know why Leschetizky had so many wives, but people liked him, his students adored him, he was very cosmopolian man, he helped a lot of people and he was a very good musician, pianist and teacher.

It’s been a while since much activity here and I wondered if anyone had heard the new recording of Symphonies 5 and 9 by the Russian National Orchestra in their ongoing cycle? Unusually, it’s being shared between members of their conducting collegiate – Jurowski, Pletnev, Berglund and Kreizberg, who conducts this disc. Just listened to the 5th and it’s quite a performance. It’s very well engineered, with a warm, luxurious sound that really allows for a lot of orchestral detail to be heard. The rendition of the 5th is polished and, in terms of tempi, similar to Rostropovich’s LSO recording, although the LSO live disc has rather disappointing sound quality. A pretty straightforward 1st movement - well played, although I miss, inevitably, the characterful Russian woodwind of years past. The second movement strikes me as a bit too careful, especially compared to the helter-skelter of Kondrashin, Gergiev and, especially, Mravinsky in his live 1984 Leningrad performance, where the woodwind are fabulous. Kreizberg’s 3rd movement is very slow indeed – over 15 and a half minutes, and though the sound is beautiful, I think Kondrashin’s tempo (he comes in at just over 12 mins) makes it seem more passionate and tragic by turns; the RNO strings, in particular, do play wonderfully though, very expressive, haunting, and the slower tempo does make it harrowing at the climax.

The finale sees another big difference for me; where Kondrashin, Mravisnky and, especially, Gergiev fire off the final bars quickly, almost dismissively, Kreizberg’s ending is very slow and deliberate, sounding pompous, hollow and grim at the same time. Is it often performed this way? It’s a real contrast to the Gergiev, although the latter is very exciting and has tremendously effective bass drum blows blasting you from your seat at the close! This RNO performance is well worth hearing, I think, especially the 3rd and 4th movements. It will be interesting to see how this cycle progresses, especially with the split conducting duties.

Deerstalker hats off to our Sherlock Shostakovich - bravo for such tenacity, Ron

They are indeed not.

Abrahams did not use the spelling of the composer's name given above.

The entire posting and everything contained within it is immediately reduced to nullity by the purposed distortions made by the poster.  This "joke" passed its sell-by date on TOP, and its continued use renders the member's "contributions" to the topic of Shostakovich worthless.

Steinberg's portrait may be seen below (all one has to do is drop the correct cyrillic spelling of his name into a search engine like yandex.ru).  It is uncertain what shoes he wore or how his trousers were ironed - apparently essential data to a correct understanding of a composer's output?


Steinberg's own output is worth some time.  His Symphony No 4 was dedicated to the newly-completed rail project linking Siberia (Novosibirsk) with Central Asia (Semipalatinsk at the time, although the line now runs to present-day Almaty), and is entitled "Turk-Sib" ("Turkestan-Siberian").  The railway also inspired a documentary film which was accompanied by a poster that became famous in its own right.

I once made that mistake! I gossipped wi' Curley in't Rovers when 'e told me about his new job on't bins. I said "Oh Curley, you 've done well - one small step for Curley, one great leap for 't bins".

And do you know - the blummin'ummer corrected me! He said "No Ena - it's 'one giant leap'...". I could 'ave killed the little so-and-so!