Review By Christoph Vratz,Fono Forum,July 2012
8.572824-25_Fono-Forum_072012_fr.pdf
Review By George Dorris,Ballet Review,June 2012
This silent film is an expressionist comic-tragic treatment of the Fall of Paris to the Prussians in 1870, while New Babylon is a luxury department store representing the corrupt French society that brutally put down the Commune that had taken over the city when the Prussians left. Shostakovich’s score juxtaposes irony, nose-thumbing humor, and quiet introspection, providing a parallel track and commentary on the action rather than accompanying it. Brilliantly scored for a small orchestra, it provides a link to his score for the 1930 ballet The Golden Age, with its famous polka.
Fitz-Gerald’s splendid recording of the complete score…emphasizes the score’s many contrasting elements…The extensive annotations offer valuable insights into both the highly original film and its score. © 2012 Ballet Review
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Review By Record Geijutsu,June 2012
8.572824-25_The Record Geijutsu_062012_ja.pdf
Review By Stephen Schwartz,ClassicalCDReview.com,May 2012
Incredible re-thinking of movie music.
The music bucks and bites, with a heavy satirical use of L’ Marseilles and Offenbach’s famous can-can to show the frivolity of the bourgeoisie as well as its duplicitous use of patriotism. Shostakovich displays such a sharp sense of stage picture and mood that you can almost see the images before you. Despite the many snaps and stings, the composer gives you moments of tenderness, cruelly lopped off. An old Communard finds a piano as part of the street barricades and sits down to play a “French Song” (actually a Jewish one). He goes on for a bit before a sniper picks him off.
Fitz-Gerald and his Baslers do a crisp, clean job. © 2012 ClassicalCDReview.com Read complete review
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Review By Geoff Brown,BBC Music Magazine,March 2012
Fitz-Gerald uses his own edition of the score, prepared after careful research. The joy of it lies in the light instrumentation of 18 players, mostly one to a part, which adds new clarity to a varied score offering plenty of signposts to the Shostakovich to come. There’s also the novelty of 130 extra bars—four new minutes of bitter music for the film’s original ending, subsequently cut. © 2012 BBC Music Magazine
Review By Franck Mallet,Classica,March 2012
8.572824-25_Classica_032012_fr.pdf
Review By Neue Zuercher Zeitung,February 2012
8.572824-25_Neue_Zurcher_Zeitung_022012_gr.pdf
Review By José Antonio Ruiz Rojo,Ritmo,February 2012
Con el presente disco ya disponemos de casi todo lo que se puede disponer en relación con uno de los grandes films soviéticos de los años veinte y una de las mejores músicas escritas para el cine mudo. Me explico. Una buena copia sonorizada de esta película de Kozintsev y Trauberg ambientada en la Comuna parisina de 1871 se publicó años atrás en DVD en Alemania en la colección Stummfilm Edition (de ZDF/Arte). La música hasta hace poco conocida la había grabado en los noventa James Judd con la Sinfónica de la Radio de Berlín para el sello Capriccio (dos CD completados con la suite de Cinco días, cinco noches). Directores como Polyansky o Rozhdestvensky, entre otros, tienen registradas suites o extractos de esta música. Faltaba, pues, que alguien descubriera los manuscritos ‘‘perdidos’’ de Shostakovich para que pudiera abordarse la grabación realmente completa de la partitura original (toda la música ahora existente) y aprovechar de paso para no incluir en la orquesta más solistas de cuerda que los cinco prescritos por el compositor. El esfuerzo es admirable, aunque el resultado quizás satisfaga más a cinéfilos aficionados al cine silente que a melómanos no especialmente interesados por la obra de Shostakovich. Como es costumbre en Naxos, el cuadernillo contiene información exhaustiva. © 2012 Ritmo
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Review By MaestroSteve,Cinemusical,January 2012
The music for New Babylon, spread over eight reels, is filled with plenty of music that is perfectly cast in the voice of the young Shostakovich…The sheer energy of the music is one of its most immediately engaging features. The galop-like rhythms appear in reel one and will recur throughout the score in stark contrast to deeply moving lyrical segments. Shostakovich loves to cast solo winds (especially staccato bassoon lines) against trumpet ideas and fast moving strings in this score. It is a rather unique sound that will be explored more in concert works.
Most fascinating in this score is the emotional content of the music. The score is not intent on highlighting specific punctuations but more expressing the fabric of scenes adding a depth to the on-screen images.
The music sounds clear and crisp as a result and much more like a chamber work. One is struck at how brilliant the entire ensemble does sound however and the recording equally aids this process with proper sound imaging…the members of the Basel Sinfonietta are simply fantastic in this performance with clean articulation and a real sense for how this music connects with the style…Naxos’ superb early film music releases and is not to be missed…this and the earlier release are worth adding to your collection as they present two valid and well-crafted performances of this fascinating early Shostakovich score. © 2012 Cinemusical Read complete review
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Review By David Bratman,San Francisco Classical Voice,January 2012
there’s something for everyone in this music. If you don’t like the mood now, it’ll change in the next minute. Throughout, Shostakovich’s orchestration is brilliant, and the Basel Sinfonietta plays it all under Fitz-Gerald’s sure direction with unflagging dedication and precision, with an ear to the crisp bite and unpredictable moodiness that the composer obviously wants. Blaring trumpets, wailing clarinet, caustic violin, a large battery of sometimes surprising percussion—and their startling opposites in coy gentleness from the same instruments—all stand out, while mixing into a coherent ensemble. It’s hard not to sense that Shostakovich’s honest original voice is speaking here… © 2012 San Francisco Classical Voice Read complete review
Review By Craig Zeichner,Ariama.com,December 2011
this new recording, performed by the Basel Sinfonietta and conducted by Mark Fitz-Gerald, is on an entirely different plane since it presents all the surviving music from the original lost score.
This is high-octane music whose sheer audacity makes up for its lack of subtlety.
The Basel Sinfonietta are superb. The music is rhythmically complex and filled with some pretty grotesque passages, but the ensemble is always polished and precise. Conductor Mark Fitz-Gerald steers the group through the thorniest passages while maintaining a solid sense of pace and continuity. The sound quality is very high end. The brass and percussion have a punch that is thrilling while strings and winds have warmth. The Naxos Film Music Classics series has been consistently excellent, but with New Babylon and other Shostakovich scores (Odna, The Fall of Berlin and The Girlfriends) it has become indispensible. © 2011 Ariama.com Read complete review
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Review By Jean-Christophe Le Toquin,ResMusica.com,December 2011
Dimitri Chostakovitch a 22 ans, le succès international de sa Symphonie n°1 l’a libéré de son travail alimentaire de pianiste de cinéma, le film est encore muet. Mais voilà déjà qu’il y revient, par la grande porte, à l’occasion d’une première commande pour un film historique sur la Commune de Paris, qui est réalisé par deux cinéastes d’avant-garde, Grigori Kozintsev et Leonid Trauberg. Avec leur accord, il prend le parti que la musique ne soit pas la simple illustration des images, mais qu’elle soit le contrepoint, parfois même le contrepied. Il n’a qu’un mois pour composer une partition de 90 minutes pour 14 à 20 musiciens. Fort de son expérience du Nez d’après la nouvelle de Gogol, l’auteur favori de Kozintsev et Trauberg, il écrit une musique virtuose, sarcastique, canaille avec ses emprunts à Offenbach (French cancan oblige !) et à la Marseillaise, qui incarne la transposition au cinéma de l’effervescence artistique de cette période révolutionnaire.
Moins de deux semaines avant la première, les réalisateurs bouleversent le montage, et Chostakovitch n’a que six jours pour réécrire la partition symphonique, et trois pour préparer les parties des musiciens. L’exigence virtuose, le parti-pris original qui va à l’encontre des pots-pourris de Tchaïkovski, Grieg et Wagner utilisés ordinairement, le manque de préparation, tout concourt au fiasco : « le chef est saoul ! » s’exclame-t-on le soir de la première le 18 mars 1929. Deux mois auparavant, un décret officiel avait imposé la « prolétarisation » de l’art afin qu’il soit accessible aux masses, la fin de l’âge d’or des années 20 est amorcée. La partition fut retirée, retrouvée à la Bibliothèque de Leningrad en 1975 peu après la mort de Chostakovitch, éditée intégralement en 2004 par les éditions DSCH, et enregistrée ici dans une version préparée par Mark Fitz-Gerald et qu’il a souhaité la plus proche possible des intentions du compositeur. En effet, la partition publiée restituait tout ce qui avait été écrit par Chostakovitch, mais la précipitation dans laquelle la musique avait été achevée dans les jours précédant la sortie du film avait entraîné un nombre important d’erreurs et d’incohérences avec le film.
La différence la plus remarquable par rapport aux versions de James Judd (Capriccio, 1990) et Frank Strobel (Haenssler Classics, 2006) est le recours à la formation origi
Review By Nick Barnard ,MusicWeb International,November 2011
The score presented here is as significant as it is relatively unknown and this new recording can lay fair claim to being definitive.
Whether measured by the yardstick of the history of cinema, the Soviet Union or simply as part of the Shostakovich oeuvre this is an important release. Add to that the fact that this recording offers the most complete, skilfully reconstructed and authentic...rendition of the score yet made. It becomes a compulsory purchase. It is a magnificent piece of work and one that shows how even at the tender age of 23 Shostakovich understood the compelling power of the moving image.
Fitz-Gerald conducts the Basel Sinfonietta and they prove to be stunningly fine collaborators.
Without doubt this is one the finest all-round achievements by Naxos. Read complete review
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