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Glazunov and Steinberg both probably "helped" Shostakovich with his First Symphony, but as neither of them produced anything as extraordinarily accomplished as that work, I don't think it could've been anything more "helpful" than "You-might-like-to-double-that-violin-line-an-octave-higher-with-a-piccolo"-sort-of-thing.
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Neville Marriner said in an interview that if he was selling a violin he might play the slow movement to show off its lovely tone, or words to that effect. I heard it (and have the records) at the Stoko 60th Anniversary concert with the LSO at the RFH on 14 June 1972 played by Silvia Marcovici. There was a 70 year age difference between conductor and soloist. I've also got a nice CD of it by Julia Krasko which I picked up at a St David's Hall concert where she played, er, something else.Originally Posted by Barbirollians
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I liked the tale about Glazunov drinking through a rubber tube in clesses, recounted by Shostakovich.
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That's what I think as well.
I do think too that it wasn't this symphony, but an earlier work -the variations for orchestra opus 3- which was helped by Glazunov and/or Steinberg, listening to some passage around the middle (some 5 minutes) into the work. I don't hear much influence of these teachers in either the orchestral scherzo opus 1 or the one opus 7 either.
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Rather more than rumour, at least in the case of Steinberg/Shtaynberg. As Gerald Abraham reported in "Eight Soviet Composers" (1943):
"In the words of a statement by Shostakovich's composition professor, Maximilian Steinberg, 'A number of writers have referred to Shostakovich's First Symphony as one of his best works, but no one has reminded us that this Symphony was written in the Conservatoire class. The First Symphony, the highest possible expression of his talent, is the result of his study in the Conservatoire. I was very distressed by Shostakovich's published allegation that in the Conservatoire we only "hindered him from composing".'
"The fairly obvious inference," continues Mr. Abraham, "is that Steinberg himself had had some hand in the polishing of the Symphony, that his relationship to it was (shall we say?) similar to Stanford's rumoured relationship to Hiawatha's Wedding Feast. That may be one reason why Shostakovich has never done anything as good as his Opus 10."
May I point out that this is matter of mere opinion? - many other music-lovers (including myself) hold the opposing view.
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Never mind Mr Gerald Abraham, the content of whose physically slim and intellectually even slimmer volume This Modern Stuff comes across for the most part as so narrow-minded and stick-in-the-mud that one could easily have been forgiven, even at the time of its original publication (1933 - not that I was around then, of course!), for assuming that it was either a tongue-in-cheek exercise or a deliberate attempt to try to prop up the then still all-too-prevalent backward-looking parochial English attitude of which anyone who cared about 20th century music ought to have been (as no doubt some indeed were) thoroughly ashamed (and quite what the copied fragments from Schönberg and Walton's What's The-Portsmouth-Point that I seem to recall on its front cover from the long-off the days before I gave the book away were supposed to achieve I have less than no idea, although to my mind they served only to tinge it with a peculiar sense of the bizarre) - the fact that its foreword was written by Sir Walford Davies (on whom read Sorabji in his Mi Contra Fa: The Immoralisings of a Macchiavellian Musician, published also in England just 14 years later) tends, however, to suggest the latter; much better to get a proper perspective on Shostakovich's First Symphony from http://www.siue.edu/~aho/musov/reccom/reccom.html, from which it will be seen not only that its origins date from somewhat earlier than was once assumed to be the case but also that Steinberg's take on what he first saw of the work displeased him sufficiently to cast grave doubt upon any likelihood of a wish on his part to "help" its composer with it, albeit not sufficiently to encourage him to drop work on it.
Whilst you may and indeed have done so, that opinion is almost universally held in respect of Steinberg and not uncommon in respect of Glazunov (who was nevertheless a far finer composer than Steinberg); let us also bear in mind that, when the work was new, it attracted almost instant respect and effusive admiration from many notable conductors and other musicians, including Malko (who conducted its première), Walter and Stokowski and received far more performances within a far shorter space of time than have most composers' first symphonies since the similar instant success that had been Elgar's less than two decades earlier.
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I think I can hear why there have been comments about Glazunov following the outing of the 5th Symphony last Thursday on Essential Classics. Rozhdestvensky's performance starts off as one of the most beautiful I've heard of this symphony, but never seems to get beyond that. Fedoseyev's performance, for example, has much more drive. Most of the Russian performances suffer from relatively poor recordings, plus also some "interesting" sounds from the brass sections, with very brittle sounding trumpets etc. Is this the HIPP way to play Russian 19th Century music?
It is worth looking out for the recordings by Fedoseyev which are usually available as cheap downloads for all the symphonies from iTunes or eMusic, and just living with the sound. Unfortunately the sound quality of the downloads of Fedoseyev's version is rather poor - particularly in the 5th, and the original master tapes have deteriorated so there's not much hope of improvement. Anyone keen on Fedoseyev might be better advised to look for LPs on eBay, as there were some EMI/Melodiya issues which may have acceptable sound. Rob also mentioned Konstantin Ivanov's version of the 5th. This can be heard via Napster, and although it doesn't have so much beauty of sound, it does get a move on and overall probably has more impact (than Rozhdestvensky's).
I'm not sure if it is possible to completely redeem the last movement of this symphony, which often sounds brash, but some conductors do a better job than others.
Last edited by Dave2002; 14-08-12 at 16:59.
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The river folk have the download of the entire Fedoseyev cycle at an astonishingly low price, which may help to compensate for the low sound quality:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Glazunov-The...37083&sr=301-2
... in fact, if you also buy this set at the same time:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Glazunov-The...37083&sr=301-1
... you can get two complete Glazunov Symphony cycles (plus smaller orchestral "fillers") for a fiver each!
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That is indeed a good deal.
Even better for the two for £10 deal is this - http://www.amazon.co.uk/Glazunov-The...59575&sr=301-1 which adds a couple of extra pieces to the symphonies - the Slavonic Feast (?) in G and the March in E flat. They're not really essential, but if they can be obtained at no extra cost might as well be added in. AFAIK there is no quality difference between the collections with and without those two extra pieces.
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Thanks, Dave: I'd no idea Amazon had two different versions of the same Fedoseyev cycle in the same "2 for a Tenner" offer!
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