These are wonderful performances, incredibly virtuosic, profoundly dramatic, and tremendously exciting. Violinist
Elmar Oliveira has the guts to take on
Shostakovich's harrowing Violin Concerto No. 1 and he has the strength, the sensitivity, and the sheer stubbornness to get through from its anguished opening Nocturne to its exhilarated closing Burlesca. Conductor
Gerard Schwarz has the chops to cover
Oliveira's back in the Concerto, the backbone to take the opening Largo from
Shostakovich's Symphony No. 6 with immense weight and gravity, and the courage to charge through the closing Presto of the Symphony like a circus band gone mad. The
Seattle Symphony plays with more panache, more power, and more compassion than most of their brothers and sisters to the east and south. Producers Laura Harth Rodriguez, Al Swanson, Dmitri Lipai, and Adam Stern make a bigger and better sound than most of their older relatives in the industry. While everyone should hear one of
David Oistrakh's magisterial recordings of the Concerto and either
Kondrashin's massive or
Mravinsky's maniacal recordings of the Symphony,
Oliveira and
Schwarz recording is well worth hearing on its own merits.