National Polish Radio Symphony Orchestra Katowice

Shostakovich 
Rule, Britannia!, Op. 28, The Girlfriends, Op. 41 (reconstructed Fitz-Gerald), Salute to Spain, Op. 44, Symphonic Movement (unfinished, completed Fitz-Gerald).
Kamil Barczewski (bass); Celia Sheen (theremin); Camerata Silesia; Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra/Mark Fitz-Gerald.
Naxos 8.572138 (1 hour 14 minutes). Russian texts and English translations included. Website www.naxos.com. Producer/ Engineer Beata Jankowska, Engineer Wojciech Marzec, Dates June 23rd, August 27th-30th, September 20th-22nd and October 23rd, 2008.

For the many admirers of Shostakovich and, I would suggest, for the general music lover, this is an issue of considerable importance. It contains, as can be seen, the complete film score for The Girlfriends ('Podrugi') dating from 1935 and first shown the following year within a few weeks of the notorious denunciation of the composer in Pravda, together with the surviving scores of two theatrical productions from 1931 and 1936.
As is tolerably well known, during the mid-1930s Shostakovich was working on his Fourth Symphony, which, following that denunciation, was withdrawn in rehearsal and not heard until December 1961. Prior to beginning the work we now know as the Fourth Symphony, Shostakovich - then the blue-eyed boy of Soviet musical art - began a symphony which he abandoned (we assume for purely musical reasons). Had he completed it, that work would have been No. 4, but he stopped after writing a fair amount of what would have been the first movement. This has been published in the new Collected Edition and has been recorded on the Arts label: all of this business comes from a particularly rich and fertile period of Shostakovich's life; he was not yet 30 when the events took place.
This new Naxos CD includes another incomplete first movement from 1944 of what would have been Shostakovich's Ninth Symphony, had he continued with it. As is also well known, following the wartime Seventh and Eighth Symphonies, it was widely expected (especially in the closing months of that year, when the end of the war in favour of the Allies was merely a matter of time) that Shostakovich would complete his symphonic 'war' trilogy, so to speak, with a triumphant large-scale work. In the event, what he did provide, in his completed Ninth Symphony of August 1945, was a predominantly light piece full of humorous touches, the opposite, in fact, from the expected monumental score. Mark Fitz-Gerald, the highly gifted British musician to whom Shostakovich lovers already owe a great deal, thanks to his earlier admirable CD of Shostakovich's complete score for the film Alone ('Odna'), Op. 26 (1929-31), reconstructed and brilliantly conducted by him with the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra on Naxos 8.570316, concludes this programme with the world premiere recording of what is now generally assumed to have been part of the first movement of an earlier Ninth Symphony. It dates from the early months of 1945 and, had Shostakovich continued with it, would manifestly have been the dramatic and powerful work everyone was expecting. Quite why he did not continue with this music is also conjectural. Perhaps he saw the way things were going with regard to Stalin's plans for post-war Eastern Europe and felt uncomfortable about the assumptions, public and political, that would have attached to the work in the immediate peacetime period.
Fitz-Gerald has, however, done the right thing in bringing this large-scale symphonic exordium to our attention; the music is first-class, gripping and deadly serious in its own way, and would have been expanded into a 'first movement symphonic Allegro' that always seemed at one time to elude the composer. Almost seven minutes in duration, the music in the manuscript just stops, as it were, in mid-flight; Fitz-Gerald has added eight bars to bring it to a satisfactory conclusion, with the result that it can certainly stand as a Tragic Overture for separate concert performance. Fitz-Gerald conducts what appears to be a magnificent account, with the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra playing with considerable commitment and fire. The music itself is fascinating in the sense that it can be seen to cast a distant forward glance towards the Tenth Symphony of 1953, composed in the wake of Stalin's death. This 1945 symphonic movement is concerned with two elliptical ideas: the first, a rising minor (and minatory) three-note figure, as that which begins (completely differently, much more slowly and emotionally laden with a heavy heart) the Tenth; and a rhythmic idea that presages the second subject of the Tenth (the clarinet theme). Clearly, these ideas were already gradually being formed and mulled over in Shostakovich's mind eight years previously, prior to finally coming to their fullest expression in the great Tenth Symphony.
If the most important music on this disc is this unfinished Symphonic Movement (certainly deserving of publication and performance), the majority of it is taken up with the incidental music to a film and two plays. In this regard, we again owe Fitz-Gerald a great deal: the largest of these scores is that for the film, over three-quarters of an hour's worth of music, which he has completely reconstructed from manuscript sources and from the soundtrack. If the score overall has been, up to now, unknown, not all the music is unfamiliar. The film score contains eight preludes for string quartet, and the first is better known as the central section of the second movement of the String Quartet No. 1 of 1938 (i.e., four years later). The sheer invention of this score as a totality is breathtaking. There are 23 individual numbers, of wide-ranging instrumentation, embracing string quartet, solo and duo trumpet, solos and duet a cappella singing, chorus, theremin, piano (plus strings and trumpet - get the importance?), full orchestra, organ and so on, the whole forming a dazzling display of fascinating, worthwhile music, some of which turns up in later concert works. Most of it would have disappeared forever were it not for the assiduousness of Fitz-Gerald and the suggestions from Mrs Irina Shostakovich (the composer's widow) that he record both The Girlfriend and the Symphonic Movement. I have found this a wonderful collection of unknown and manifestly worthwhile Shostakovich. The two other much shorter suites of incidental theatre music are also well worth our attention (the 'Internationale' in Rule, Britannia! is a wicked and very funny joke, and the brief fifth movement surely anticipates a very dramatic moment in the Eight Symphony). As a consequence, our knowledge of this great composer is enhanced by this disc.
The performances are absolutely superb throughout: clearly, a great deal of care and preparation has gone into the making of this disc. The recording quality is excellent and the booklet notes (running to 20 pages in English alone, with full texts and translations also included) are full of the most fascinating information; John Riley, in particular, one of five contributors to the notes, is much to be commended for his research. Yet if any one person must be applauded for the success of this project, apart from the composer, of course, it is Mark Fitz-Gerald. I hope there is more to come: perhaps the Sixteenth Quartet, written down under Shostakovich's supervision by one of his pupils in the summer of 1975. 

Robert Matthew-Walker, International Record Review [May 2009]