Russian Romances : Jurowski / Cologne RSO, Fomina, Sinjawskaja, Mischenkin, Kotscherga, Babykin, etc (2CD)

Shostakovich: Russian Romances

Three Romances on Poems by Pushkin, Op. 46a
Analotji Babykin (bass)

From Jewish Folk Poetry, Op. 79/79a
Nina Fomina (soprano), Tamara Sinjawskaja (alto), Arkadi Mischenkin (tenor)

Six Romances on Verses by Raleigh, Burns and Shakespeare, Op. 62/140
Stanislaw Suleymanow (bass)

Suite on verses by Michelangelo Buonarroti, for bass & orchestra, Op. 145a
Anatoli Kotscherga (bass)

Six Romances on Texts by Japanese Poets, Op. 21
Wladimir Kasatschuk (tenor)

Six Poems of Marina Tsvetayeva, Op. 143a (for contralto and chamber orchestra)
Tamara Sinjawskaja (alto)

Kolner Rundfunk-Sinfonie-Orchester / Michail Jurowski, conductor

Recorded: 1994, 1996

For a composer of vocal music in a totalitarian state such as the former Soviet Union, the very choice of poet was itself a declaration of commitment which - quite apart from the content - was linked to the life of the writer and above all his ideological evaluation by the Party. In his song-cycles, Shostakovich, a virtuoso in eloquent rhetoric behind the facade of beating the drum for Communism, made masterly use of the symbolic resonances of names such as Pushkin who hated the Tsars, or the Futurist Alexander Blok, or Shakespeare's timeless critique of power, or the Jewish culture that was so brutally suppressed after the War.