For the hardcore Shostakovich lover who can't get enough of the composer at his most vicious and vulgar, this 1994 recording by Mark Elder and the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra will be just the thing. Shostakovich loved Shakespeare's Hamlet and King Lear and he composed incidental music for stage productions of both. But the Shakespeare that Shostakovich loved was far more of a twentieth century poltroon than an Elizabethan fop and his incidental music is heavy on the brutal, the banal, and the downright disgusting. ...
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For the hardcore Shostakovich lover who can't get enough of the composer at his most vicious and vulgar, this 1994 recording by Mark Elder and the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra will be just the thing. Shostakovich loved Shakespeare's Hamlet and King Lear and he composed incidental music for stage productions of both. But the Shakespeare that Shostakovich loved was far more of a twentieth century poltroon than an Elizabethan fop and his incidental music is heavy on the brutal, the banal, and the downright disgusting. But that doesn't mean it doesn't work, given the right performances, and these performances of the complete 1932 Hamlet, the partial 1954 Hamlet, and the complete 1941 King Lear are the right performances. Mark Elder is a down and dirty director who conducts Shostakovich's bitter and bilious music with aplomb. The orchestra members are not only virtuosos, they are sleazy and soiled performers who find the awful and the ugly in every note. In context, this is a good thing. The sound...
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