Leon Botstein

Leon Botstein, London Symphony Orchestra – Popov: Symphony No.1 & Shostakovich: Theme and Variations (2004)
SACD Rip | SACD ISO | DST64 2.0 & 5.1 > 1-bit/2.8224 MHz | 65:05 minutes | Scans NOT included | 3,33 GB
or FLAC 2.0 Stereo(converted with foobar2000 to tracks) 24bit/96 kHz | Front, Scans NOT included | 1,24 GB
Features Stereo and Multichannel Surround Sound | Telarc # SACD-60642

Dmitry Shostakovich had a kind of protean musical genius that could take the shape of any container it was poured into. But what would have happened if his genius had been less adaptable? He might have ended up like Gavriil Popov: virtually unknown 100 years after his birth and 32 years since his death. These two composers had remarkably similar backgrounds. Both were daring young stars ascending in the Soviet firmament until the state intervened and censured them in the 1930’s. Shostakovich adapted and recovered artistically; Popov did not. With this excellent new recording of Popov’s early 1st Symphony, Leon Botstein and the London Symphony show us just how big Popov might have been. There are echoes of Shostakovich’s tart writing, but there is also much that is original.

On the 70th anniversary of the completion of Popov’s Symphony No. 1, Botstein and the London Symphony Orchestra bring the work to life on a new Telarc recording that also includes Shostakovich’s Theme and Variations, Op. 3. Popov’s Symphony No. 1 “fits into the category of great music in the orchestral repertory that requires advocacy,” says Leon Botstein. “This symphony is a case in which a totalitarian state forced a work into obscurity and ultimately undermined the great talent that Gavriil Popov was”.

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Leon Botstein, London Symphony Orchestra – Liszt: Symphonie zu Dantes Divina commedia & Tasso, lamento e trionfo (2003)
SACD Rip | SACD ISO | DST64 2.0 & 5.0 > 1-bit/2.8224 MHz | 63:43 minutes | Scans NOT included | 3,08 GB
or FLAC 2.0 Stereo(converted with foobar2000 to tracks) 24bit/96 kHz | Front, Scans NOT included | 1,19 GB
Features Stereo and Multichannel Surround Sound | Telarc # SACD-60613

Telarc releases a compelling recording of Franz Liszt’s “Eine Symphonie zu Dantes Divina Commedia (Dante Symphony)” and “Tasso, lamento e trionfo” with the London Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Leon Botstein and featuring London Oratory School Schola. The symphony is a typical mixture of Lisztian rhetoric and inspiration. The secret to success is to churn through the rhetoric without apologies, and to savor the inspiration when it comes.

Botstein is too tasteful to indulge himself in the hellfire of “Inferno.” One can’t quite smell the brimstone and hear the gnashing of teeth. Botstein’s attempt to subdue the composer’s vulgarity (at least in this movement) is admirable, but one might argue that vulgarity is precisely the point – this is Hell, after all. In the “Purgatorio,” Botstein’s soft-grained approach works much better, and the entrance of the chorus is truly magical. Unlike most (or all?) of the competition, Botstein uses a boys’ choir in the “Magnificat.” I believe that Liszt specified women’s voices, yet it is hard to argue with the effect of disarming innocence that Botstein achieves here. In the closing moments of the Dante Symphony, Botstein’s reading definitely comes into its own as competition against Barenboim, Masur, Kojian, and the like.

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