This latest addition to Wigglesworth's slow-burning but highly praised Shostakovich symphony cycle with BIS features once more the excellent Netherlands Radio PO in its Hilversum studio. The Fourth Symphony is one of the least known and sometimes least appreciated of the cycle, a three movement behemoth which challenges conductor, audience and orchestra. Perhaps a good clue to its nature is the enigmatic abstract composition of the grey-toned photograph on the disc's cover - a subject which could have a thousand "meanings", and yet perhaps is nothing more or less than what one sees before one.

Wigglesworth's approach with the half-hour first movement is to let it breathe, and this allows the clear ABABA structure (one of Shostakovich's favourites) to reveal itself with great clarity. He negotiates the transitions between the sections skilfully, letting the pungent instrumental solos and mordent wit of their ripostes make their full mark. The droll scherzo which serves as a second movement often feels like a flurry of quotational chippings from the scores of Stravinsky, Mahler and even Brahms, let alone his own music. Here, the wind chorus rattle out these motifs like molten irony, and the movement finally collapses from exhaustion into a soft toy-town tick-tock sequence that just falls silent.

The great Largo third movement, also in ABABA form, is a kaleidoscopic movement, rich in orchestral colour. Bizarrely, it begins and ends with a funeral march yet in between it runs through a gamut of dance forms, from waltz through to galop, with a toccata thrown in. Wigglesworth brought my attention sharply here to the very Russian-ness which soaks the bones of this piece. This is the rough, earthy peasant Russia that Stravinsky was so fond of, with its half-remembered folk songs yelled out of tune in drunken enthusiasm. Again the woodwind are garrulous but only spout trite comments; the best replies come from the comic farts of the tubas. The return of the opening funeral march is beautifully handled, turning into a chorale with the uplifting potential of Mahler's one at the end of his 5th Symphony. However, this is not Mahler but Shostakovich, treading at the abyss of political banishment by the regime, and at worst in fear of his life. The two kettledrum players strike up a sub-layer of complex rhythmic ostinati, which underpins the chorale, making it deeply unsettling. This complex orchestration is beautifully recorded and is perhaps more lucidly expressed on this disc than anywhere else. Wigglesworth and the orchestra take us at the end not to triumph, but to the icy Siberian wastes, in a ghostly, subdued fade-out with tonal icicles supplied by glockenspiel and harp notes, enigmatic to the last.

BIS's 5.0 multichannel recording is very good, with a fine perspective and detail. The studio's acoustic doesn't really have much to contribute, although it contains the impressive dynamic range of the playing effectively. Mastering is at rather low level, so that the work's long very soft sections rather loose detail and focus, but with an appropriate rise in playback volume, immediacy is largely restored.

Well worth hearing, and mandatory for those collecting the BIS Shostakovich cycle.

Copyright © 2009 John Miller and HRAudio.net

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