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| 04/10/2003
(5 out of 5 stars)
You dont go to Haitink for extremes or quirkiness, so it may seem odd to recommend his recording of a work which some other conductors play as if it was the epitome of irony and quirkiness. But, just as his Mahler 6th of the early sixties offered a truly symphonic and comprehensible picture of that dark and tragic work, so this Shostakovich 15th brings us profundity mixed with tenderness viewed through sanity. And its that very sanity, which some critics (e.g. the authors of the Good CD Guide) deride, which makes the ethereal ending of the 15th so moving and yet so understandable, so human and universal in a way which more obviously edgy performances can t do. The sound is equally analytical and clear, both involving and yet also distancing in exactly the way the symphony is. There is a place for white-hot Shostakovitch interpretations, especially in the 15th, but there is also a place for this pensive and profoundly human one. ....

North Yorkshire , United Kingdom , City Of , Andrey Boreyko , Wagner Gotterdammerung , Elisabeth Soderstrom , Benjamin Britten , Kurt Sanderling , Kirill Kondrashin , Los Angeles , Bernard Haitink , Dmitri Shostakovich , Ortrun Wenkel , William Tell , Ryszard Karczykowski , Elizabeth Soderstrom , United States , Fine Shostakovich Symphony , London Philharmonic Orchestra , Concertbegouw Orchestra , From Jewish Folk Poetry , Buffalo Grove , Moscow Philharmonic , Maestro Haitink , Jewish Folk Poetry , Wiliam Tell ,