The Shostakovich Symphonies, part 1

I felt compelled to do it although I knew it might not be a good idea. One can hardly proclaim Shostakovich as the Greatest Composer of the C20th with such thin knowledge of his symphonies as I had. I thought they were too big, noisy and portentous for me and so far, up to no. 6, I'm not far wrong.

No. 5 is a bit familiar, it being one of the best-known and it is justifiably so but while the best of these pieces are important and significant, none are likely to make any sort of challenge to the String Quartets, Preludes and Fugues or Sonatas in my idea of choice Shostakovich. Even if the music is 'better than it sounds', one ideally needs to know at what level or irony or satire he is working. Sometimes it's Soviet Socialist Realism, sometimes it's not and sometimes it's in code to get past Stalin.

While one could feel uncomfortable having doubts about Shostakovich as Stalin did, one can be reassured by thinking that it is for exactly the opposite reasons. If the machismo is sometimes a bit much, one might reflect that heavy metal was so steeped in parodies of itself that it became impossible to tell which of it to take at face value and which to understand as ludicrous pastiche except that, in that case, I don't care. The problem with that kind of parody is that it's done so lovingly and expertly that it remains a tribute and fails to be subversive.

And Shostakovich was nothing if not subversive while miraculously evading punishment but he was outrageously brave and prepared to sign any old pronouncement written for him by apparatchiks, sometimes probably not even bothering to read them first.

The set of recordings by Rudolf Barshai was such a bargain at less than £1 per symphony that it matters little that once played they are unlikely to come off the shelf very often. With the Fitzwilliams's immaculate account of the Quartets offering such unfathomable depths it will take some kind of Damascean conversion to make the symphonies turntable hits ahead of them but there might yet be a penny or two that drops before I have all my prejudices confirmed.

Not quite prejudices. I have reasons for not liking Bruckner, Mahler, Wagner and Korngold as much as Bach, Beethoven et al. It's because I've heard enough to know that my priorities lie elsewhere.