Bernard Haitink conducts Shostakovich: Symphony No. 15
The Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra under the direction of its long-standing, estimated guest conductor Bernard Haitink performs Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 15.
SHOSTAKOVICH: SYMPHONY No. 15 in A major op. 141
The Dutch conductor Bernard Haitink and the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra enjoyed a long and intensive artistic collaboration, which came to an abrupt end with Haitink’s death in October 2021. BR-KLASSIK presents outstanding and previously unreleased live recordings of their concerts from past years. This recording of Shostakovich’s Fifteenth Symphony documents a concert given in February 2015 in Munich’s Philharmonie im Gasteig.
Haitink first conducted a Munich subscription concert in 1958, and from then on was a regular guest with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra – either in the Herkulessaal of the Residenz or in the Philharmonie im Gasteig. This congenial collaboration lasted for more than six decades. The orchestra musicians and singers enjoyed working with him just as much as the BR sound engineers. As an interpreter of the symphonic repertoire, and especially that of the German-Austrian Late Romantic period, Haitink was held in high esteem throughout the world. With him, the symphonies of Dmitri Shostakovich were always in the best of hands. Haitink’s driving principle was to make the sound architecture of a musical composition, with its complex interweaving, transparently audible; extreme sensitivity of sound was combined with a clearly structured interpretation of the score.
As the last symphony in the oeuvre of the Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich, the Fifteenth is a kind of symphonic conclusion. Although the composer set out to write a “happy symphony” and this epithet has since become commonplace, everything cheerful in it has a dimension that is exaggerated into the bizarre and grotesque. The work also contains musical references, for example to Rossini’s “William Tell” overture, Wagner’s “The Ring of the Nibelung” (the so-called “fate motif”) and “Tristan and Isolde”, and Alban Berg’s “Wozzeck”. Quotations from Shostakovich’s own earlier works also appear. The symphony was composed in 1971 in Repino, a suburb of St Petersburg. The world premiere took place on January 8, 1972, under the baton of the composer’s son Maxim.
BR-KLASSIK CD 900210
Dmitri Shostakovich
Symphony No. 15 in A major op. 141
Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks
Bernard Haitink conductor
Live recording: Munich, Philharmonie im Gasteig, 5./6. February 2015
Total Time: 45’54 minutes
- Shostakovich’s impressive Fifteenth – his last symphony, with which he provided a symphonic conclusion
- Recording of a February 2015 concert at Munich’s Philharmonie im Gasteig
- A representative example of Bernard Haitink’s long-standing collaboration with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra
