Always a Subtext

Still with the Berlin Philharmonic and back to Herbert von Karajan as conductor. This time it is Shostakovich's Symphony No 10. The Berlin Phil and HvK wouldn't be many people's choice for Shostakovich perhaps but the sound is again of top quality and while the performance isn't idiomatically Russian, it does the music justice. There has been so much written about Shostakovich and his relationship with the Soviet authoritiesand almost all of his symphonies have some kind of back story and subtext. The subtext for the 10th is that it was published in 1953 and therefore the first since the death of Stalin. It still ran into Stalinist criticism for being a pessimistic work but while it isn't exactly a barrel of laughs, it has that ambiguity common to many of Shostakovich's works. Many more of his works to be considered as they come off the shelf.