Shostakovich: The Symphonies (2005)

When this cycle of the symphonies of Shostakovich with Dmitri Kitajenko conducting the Gürzenich-Orchester Köln was released in 2005, Shostakovich cycles were no longer the novelties they had been in the latter years of the twentieth century. There were already several superlative cycles in circulation -- the monumental Kondrashin, the modernist Rozhdestvensky, the anguished Barshai -- and a pair of superlative cycles nearing completion -- the commanding Jansons and the compelling Gergiev -- when the Kitajenko -- Köln cycle ... Read More

When this cycle of the symphonies of Shostakovich with Dmitri Kitajenko conducting the Gürzenich-Orchester Köln was released in 2005, Shostakovich cycles were no longer the novelties they had been in the latter years of the twentieth century. There were already several superlative cycles in circulation -- the monumental Kondrashin, the modernist Rozhdestvensky, the anguished Barshai -- and a pair of superlative cycles nearing completion -- the commanding Jansons and the compelling Gergiev -- when the Kitajenko -- Köln cycle was issued on Capriccio in superaudio sound. Listeners who knew Kitajenko only from his recordings made before the collapse of Communism for Melodiya were caught off guard by his complete mastery of the music, of his grasp of its every nuance of heroism and subtlety of irony, of his understanding of its gradations between pathos and bathos, of his control over its most desiccated melody and its most crushing sonority. Listeners who knew the Gürzenich-Orchester Köln from its... Read Less