čes | eng | fra | deu

World music CD DVD shop and Classic distribution

 

Hamlet & King Lear - Dmitri Shostakovich, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Mark Elder

 
Hamlet & King Lear - Dmitri Shostakovich, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Mark Elder-Viola and Piano-The Great Composers
ID: SIGCD052 (EAN: 635212005224)  | 1 CD | DDD
Released in: 2004
LABEL:
Signum Records
Collection:
The Great Composers
Composers:
SHOSTAKOVICH, Dmitry Dmitriyevich
Interprets:
WILSON-JOHNSON, David (bass-baritone) | WINTER, Louise (mezzo-soprano)
Ensembles:
City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra
Conductors:
ELDER, Mark
Other info:

Signum Records are delighted to present the second recording on SignumClassics of the CBSO, under the direction of Mark Elder.

In his youth Shostakovich devoted much time and energy to composing for the theatre and the cinema, writing for an astonishing variety of movies, political plays, satires, the music-hall and the ballet.
The music for Nikolai Akimov’s outrageous and scandalous production of Hamlet was composed in the winter of 1931 - 1932. Akimov had decided that tragedy was irrelevant to the modern Soviet audience, and therefore presented the play as a satirical farce in which the play was turned up-side-down, by reversing all the usual assumptions about the plot and how it should be acted. The alterations to Shakespeare’s work are reflected in the titles of several of Shostakovich’s numbers. He was asked to provide music for scenes that Shakespeare only refers to but which Akimov insisted on representing on stage, for example the feast where "funeral baked meats did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables". The overall character of Shostakovich’s music is often abrasive and satirical, and flippant just where we would expect the music to be more serious. There are also some funny moments, with particular sharp parodies of various well-known musico-theatrical clichés.

In 1954 Kozintsev had also attempted to direct a staged version of Hamlet. For this occasion he decided to reuse music that Shostakovich had already written for him to use in a staged production of King Lear in 1941. All that Kozintsev asked Shostakovich to add for the 1954 Hamlet were a Gigue and a Finale, both of which are included on this recording as an appendix to the music for Akimov’s 1932 production.
The music that Shostakovich wrote for Kozintsev’s 1941 King Lear production inhabits a strange and transitional world, halfway between the bright and brilliant sarcasm of the music for Akimov’s Hamlet of ten years earlier and the more soberly functional manner of his post-war theatrical music. Gone is most of the cheekiness, the fondness for the experimental and the grotesque. There is much in this often oppressively dark music that is characteristic of what was by now Shostakovich’s public symphonic manner.

Perhaps the most powerful and unusual part of the score is the bizarre cycle of Fool’s songs, with which the Fool mocks the mistakes of his master, the King, in the course of the first three Acts. The music of these songs is as strange and quirky as the words they set. Taken as a whole, these ten songs make up a miniature cycle of sourly absurd, almost expressionistic outbursts for voice and orchestra. They seem to form a whole in themselves, standing apart from.
Tracklist
 
SHOSTAKOVICH, Dmitry Dmitriyevich (1906-1975) 
Hamlet Op.32 
1. i. Prelude and night patrol3:08
 play
2. i. Funeral March2:04
 play
3. Dinner Music1:37
 play
4. i. Flourish and dance music2:35
 play
5. i. Hamlet and the small boys walking past0:59
 play
6. Hamlet and Rosencrantz's scene0:44
 play
7. i. The actors' arrival0:44
 play
8. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern's dialogue0:51
 play
9. The Hunt1:48
 play
10. The guests' entrance1:16
 play
11. The tuning of the instruments*0:56
 play
12. Prelude0:40
 play
13. Love scene of the Player-King and Player-Queen0:28
 play
14. i. The poisoner's entrance1:28
 play
15. i. 'And thou shalt life...'2:06
 play
16. i. Scene with a recorder0:47
 play
17. Pantomime1:05
 play
18. i. Hamlet carries off the body of Polonius (I)1:16
 play
19. i. The King distracts the Queen1:01
 play
20. i. The King is brought on1:37
 play
21. Fortinbras; trumpet calls0:38
 play
22. The Feast1:33
 play
23. Romance sung at the feast*1:33
 play
24. Can-can1:14
 play
25. Ophelia's ditty1:43
 play
26. Lullaby1:23
 play
27. i. Introduction to the graveyard scene *1:22
 play
28. i. The beggars passing by*3:29
 play
29. i. Joust2:37
 play
30. Fortinbras' march2:01
 play
Hamlet (1954 Production) 
31. Gigue1:37
 play
32. Finale1:29
 play
King Lear Op.58a (1941 Production) 
33. Prelude and Cordelia's ballad4:44
 play
34. The return from the hunt0:49
 play
The Fool's ten songs 
35. i. He who decides...1:35
 play
36. i. 4. The hedge-sparrow fed the cuckoo so long1:21
 play
37. i. 6. When priests are more in word than matter2:41
 play
38. i. 9. He that has and a tiny little wit2:49
 play
39. Finale of Act I1:25
 play
40. The approach of the storm1:29
 play
41. The scene of the heath2:03
 play
42. The blinding of Gloucester0:59
 play
43. i. The military encampment2:45
 play
44. March2:09
 play
Louise Winter mezzo soprano 
David Wilson-Johnson baritone 

 

18.00 eur Buy

 
Customer: not signed in

CD DVD SACD
Thematic search:
  • Titles
  • Composers
  • Interprets 
  • Ensembles
  • Conductors
  • Instruments
  • Genre
  • Labels
  • Collections
  • Numerical listing
 
We accept PayPal
facebook
With the purchase of more
than 5 CD - your discount
will be 10%. If more than 10 CD - 15%
© 2004 - 2020

Europe RCD - World music CD shop and Classic distribution.

All rights reserved.