Mravinsky / Shostakovitch-Tchaikovsky-grieg-lyadov / Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra

It is rare that a live recording, discovered more than six decades after the event it captured, can still unsettle, astonish, and compel fresh interpretation. The 1961 Helsinki performance by Yevgeny Mravinsky and the Leningrad Philharmonic, painstakingly restored and now released by Janus Classics, does just that. This is no ordinary archival revival. It is a document of searing artistic clarity, emotional rigour, and almost metaphysical presence.

Let us begin with what is not here. Due to irreparable damage to the master tapes, the opening movement of Shostakovich’s « Fifth Symphony » is missing. And yet, the three surviving movements offer such stark intensity that the absence feels almost like a curtain rising on a drama already in motion.

The Allegretto that opens CD1 is caustic, sardonic, vividly etched. The strings bite with pizzicati that scratch at the surface of silence, while the Leningrad brass section, immediately recognisable, erupts with swagger and sardonic vitality. It’s a reading full of nervous energy, a danse macabre caught in mid-spin.

But it is in the Largo that Mravinsky’s mastery becomes incandescent. Here, the orchestra enters a nocturnal landscape, stripped of all theatricality. One is struck, at 5’50”, by a clarinet solo whose mournful inflection and timbral hue evokes Sibelius more than Shostakovich, an ironic twist, given the Finnish setting of the concert. The movement unfolds like a meditation on despair, an adagio by another name, bearing within it the embryonic darkness of the Tenth Symphony. The string writing is delivered with taut stillness; we hear the very breath of the orchestra. At the close, harp arpeggios unravel like the ticking of a macabre timepiece, fateful, inevitable. Though a glimmer of light pierces the final measures, the impression remains one of chilling solemnity.

The Allegro non troppo that concludes the symphony is a tidal force, a brutal invocation of what Mravinsky himself called “the sense of history.” There are overtones of Mussorgsky’s « Boris Godunov », with declamatory brass and massed string surges evoking not just sound but fate itself. The performance is all the more significant given Mravinsky’s historical role as the work’s dedicatee: he conducted its premiere on 21 November 1937, in a hall where tears flowed more freely than applause, a fact not lost on this Helsinki audience, either. What we hear is not simply a reading of the score, but a lived testament to its ambiguity, pain, and resilience.

Compared to this, the Tchaikovsky « Fifth » (recorded on the second CD) may initially appear more conventional, but it soon reveals its own treasures. While the recording quality is slightly broader in reverb and less dry than in the Shostakovich, the performance compensates with feverish momentum and architectural sweep. The second movement (Andante cantabile) reveals brass and horn solos of exquisite detail, particularly around the six-minute mark, while the final Andante maestoso – Allegro vivace is utterly galvanising. Mravinsky refuses to indulge in sentimentality, favouring a kind of mythic propulsion, an almost martial dignity. This is Tchaikovsky as hero, not victim.

The encores are no afterthought. Grieg’s « Solveig’s Song » is given a remarkably tender treatment, with a pianissimo that seems to evaporate into the air. Here, Mravinsky finds a lyrical transparency that belies his reputation for iron control. Lyadov’s « Baba Yaga » is another miniature gem: a furious, breathless ride reminiscent of both « Night on Bald Mountain » and « The Sorcerer’s Apprentice ». The Leningrad players bring it off with virtuosic flair and unrelenting pace, a thrilling coda to a complex and demanding programme.

A word must be said for the sonic restoration. Janus Classics has performed nothing short of a miracle. Working from Finnish broadcaster YLE’s original mono tapes, Janus engineers have applied a spectral restoration process that preserves both timbral warmth and astonishing detail. Gone is the hiss, the distortion; what remains is a sonic image of rare immediacy. Harps glisten. Celestas whisper. Brass blaze. Even Mravinsky’s breathing, the rustle of scores, the tension between notes: everything is present. It’s a mono recording that rivals, and at times surpasses, stereo counterparts of the era in sheer impact.

In the end, this release is a resurrection. A glimpse into a conductor’s spiritual laboratory. If one were to quibble, it would be with the fragmentary nature of the material: the missing Shostakovich movement, the clipped Tchaikovsky opening. But these absences also heighten the sense of rarity, of listening through a keyhole to something almost too sacred to be preserved.

For all its archival limitations, this album offers something almost impossible to find today: artistic conviction without compromise, recorded at the very edge of the Cold War, in a land of myth and mist. It is, above all, a reminder that music, real music, needs no apology for its intensity.