GRAMOPHONE Review: Shostakovich Symphonies Nos. 6 & 9 – BBC National Orchestra of Wales/Lloyd-Gonzales

Shostakovich’s Sixth and Ninth symphonies clearly belong together – flip sides of the same coin, the composer wrong-footing the Soviet establishment with an irony bordering on insanity. The opening Largo of the Sixth is one of his greatest deceptions and Steven Lloyd-Gonzalez (in this his debut recording for First Hand Records) ladles on the intensity in what is clearly music of serious consequence. Or so Shostakovich leads us to believe. Remember this was widely rumoured to be his long promised ‘Lenin’ symphony.

And so what begins as an epic and ends like a three-ring circus is hard to read. The empty wastes of the first movement (icy piccolo and contra-bassoon map out the desolation) portend anything but a work of tribute or celebration but rather a protracted poem of sadness and disappointment. The cor anglais (Shostakovich’s instrument of choice for melancholy) has an aria and as strings climb ever higher, they are undercut by a tolling chord from the depths. Woodwinds contribute aimless arabesques. Lloyd-Gonzalez has the measure, the prevailing aimlessness of this first movement, a sense of music holding its breath.

And wherever that might be taking us is then halted by frivolity. The lethally concise second and third movements are cynical and then some. The composer, if you like, thumbing his nose at the establishment’s high expectations. What’s most needed to bring them flying off the page is a keen sense of collective rhythm and an irrepressible irreverence. That comes largely from the clowning, tumbling woodwinds – and the BBC National Orchestra of Wales fields a suitably raucous team.

The Ninth Symphony rolls with even more punches though here the music here is polarised by a series of mood swings. The masks of comedy and tragedy are quickly interchangeable, and I love that the first bassoon (excellent) gets to be high-minded in the bridging trombone-laden Largo only to switch tack into the rumbustious finale as if to say, ‘only joking’.

That terrific moment into the coda where the Red Army Ensemble (or so it would seem) arrive in all their goose-stepping vulgarity is duly savoured by Lloyd-Gonzalez in a big ‘altogether now’ ritardando, an air of pomposity driving the gaudy parade home.

So more than decent well-engineered performances which while they may not displace the very best on offer more than hold their own in fierce competition.