This disc offers the premiere of the complete score to Michail Tsekhanovsky’s projected animated film of Pushkin’s short story The Tale of the Priest and his Worker, Balda. Shostakovich wrote about 50 minutes’ worth of music for the project, but the director never finished the film and so most of the music never saw the light of day (or the screen). The music, which dates from the early- to mid-1930s, is exactly contemporary with the opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, the Cello Sonata, the First Piano Concerto, and the Fourth Symphony, and so comes at the height of the composer’s early maturity. Bits have appeared on disc before, most notably thanks to Gennady Rozhdestvensky on Melodiya.
Although like most film scores the various cues aren’t long (a couple of minutes on average, with a few double that length), the music is extremely brilliant, and Shostakovich had the advantage of working with a director willing to adapt the film to the music rather than the other way around, so each bit has an unusual degree of formal completeness.
The scoring also is quite brilliant, with the first half written almost entirely for winds and percussion, and throughout the writing for strings is quite sparing. There is some mercifully brief narration (for a young boy’s voice) and a good bit of singing from both soloists and chorus representing the various characters.
The story is charming: an arrogant priest gives his servant three supposedly impossible tasks, but the servant completes them all and as his reward gets to give his master three sharp knocks on the head. It’s easy to understand how this subject would have appealed to the Soviet authorities a century on down the road, but the important point is that the demands of the party and Shostakovich’s musical inspiration never find themselves at odds with one another. This may not be “great” music in the wider sense, but it is a major work fully characteristic of its composer and typical of his style at this time, and so having it all on disc is more than welcome.
Happily, the performance is outstanding in every way. Thomas Sanderling obviously relishes the music’s humor, but also has the good sense to make sure that his orchestra and vocal forces respect the work. Tempos are lively, the ensemble is well-drilled, and balances are excellent. Certainly the very busy winds and brass do a terrific job in keeping the energy level consistently high–this is cartoon music after all, and emotional depth isn’t the point. It’s all about brilliance and color.
Highlights include several dances (for bell-ringers and a bear; there’s a waltz, and even a not very serious Dance of the Dead), as well as a lovely lullaby and some very amusing appearances of the Devil. Shostakovich’s own brief suite from Lady Macbeth (just three short interludes) makes an apt coupling in similar style, and the engineering is just great. This is a must-have for fans of the composer, and a wonderful addition to the Shostakovich discography in this, his centenary year. [9/13/2006]
