GRAMOPHONE Review: Shostakovich Symphony No. 7 ‘Leningrad’- Bavarian RSO/Jansons

One of these days a Mariss Jansons recording will arrive that will confound my expectations. This, alas, is not it. You can tell at once from the cultured, well-rounded, Bavarian sound that the very notion of something edgy or unvarnished will not be countenanced. Even as the side-drum signals the seemingly innocuous toe-tapping, Stalin-friendly, tune a warmth and cosiness pervades.

Contrary to the unsettling nature of what follows, each variation in scoring designed, in effect, to recalibrate the wretched tune is subtly and slickly inflected so that far from suggesting a sinister series of mutations what we get here is a kind of catwalk presentation of each. No menace, no threat as the tune grows in confidence and ballast (I kept waiting for the excitement to kick in) and no ratcheting up of shock and awe as that terrifying change of key piles in the extra brass and a massive accumulation of decibels. This juggernaut is shiny and immaculate.

It’s the characterisation (or the lack of) that seems to me consistently wrong-headed. The fabulous first bassoon delivers a solo in the dying moments of the first movement so opulent in tone that it suggests contentment in music that is so plainly lachrymose. Beauty and blend conspire to take the edge off some of Shostakovich’s most original writing in the inner movements. Even the spooky scherzo fails to unsettle as the bass clarinet (over flutter-tonguing flutes) worms for the closing pages.

There is no chill about the stark Stravinskian wind chorale at the outset of the extraordinary third movement. I’m not denying the strange, other-worldly, quality of the playing here, the way the strings take up the limpid flute theme in such a cool luxuriant way – but what does the performance of this great movement (unique in the composer’s symphonic canon) say about the heartache and desolation therein? Is the all-pervasive mellowness of the reading, both in colour and cast, in keeping?

I will rest my case with the long road to salvation – that is, the inexorable build to the triumphant, or should I say defiant, coda. When the trombones finally weigh in with the hopeful opening theme of the symphony Shostakovich marks a huge ritardando at the point where the trumpets well and truly carry it into the affirmative – but Jansons makes nothing of the moment and proceeds to push the music forward, effectively halving the tempo in the ensuing pages as if to apologise for the bombast. And he also does that classic thing of accelerating through the timpani and bass-drum led final bars as if to whip up excitement for the big finish. The short silence before the first ‘bravo’ (this is a live performance) seems to suggest it backfires.

Not for me. It may be handsome but it just isn’t Shostakovich.