There is plenty of bombast and brutality in
André Previn's 1973 EMI recording of
Shostakovich's mighty Eighth Symphony. The bludgeoning brass and percussion in the Allegretto, driving strings and screeching woodwinds in the following Allegro non troppo, and the violent fortississimo tutti at the start of the Largo are just a few examples. But explosive as those moments are, they are all-too-brief respites within an hour-long performance that, more than anything, seems dull. The second of the composer's symphonies written during the Great Patriotic War, the five-movement Eighth opens with a half-hour Adagio and closes with a quarter-hour-long Allegretto surrounding much shorter central Allegretto, Allegro non troppo, and Largo. And while in the right performance the outer movements can be riveting in themselves and cathartic in context of the whole work, in the wrong performance they can seem to last almost as long as and take nearly as great a toll as the war that inspired them.
Previn's is just such a performance. His Adagio's main theme starts out strong, but relaxes too soon, and then it drifts into a listless reading of the second theme. His development gets big too fast and climaxes too quickly, and the pianissimo bassoon solo that follows nods off almost immediately afterwards. His recapitulation and coda sound less stunned by horror than simply numbed by boredom.
Previn's Largo begins with a bang but dwindles down to murmurs and whimpers, and his closing Allegretto seems to run around in the circles until it collapses in a worn out pianissimo coda. Even
Previn's fast and loud central Allegretto and Allegro non troppo are more sound than fury and do nothing to propel the performance forward. A virtuoso ensemble, the
London Symphony Orchestra plays here with a nonchalance that verges on indolence. Of the classic recordings, either the searing
Mravinsky/
Leningrad Symphony or the blistering
Kondrashin/
Moscow Philharmonic, both from 1961, are the Eighths to beat. Of the later recordings, the incendiary
Gergiev/Kirov Orchestra of 1995 or the
Kitajenko/Gürzenich Orchester Köln from 2005 are the Eighths to hear. But unless you have to check out every recording of the Eighth ever made, skip this one. Produced by
Christopher Bishop in Abbey Road Studio No. 1, EMI's stereo sound is edgy, hard, and shallow.