FLEISHMAN: Rothschild's Violin. SHOSTAKOVICH: The Gamblers.
Jacek Janiszewski (Ivanov, bass), Elena Gabouri (Marfa, mezzo), Andris Lapins (Rothschild, tenor); Michal Lehotsky (Ikharyov, tenor), Peter Danailov (Uteshitelny, baritone), Roman Astakhov (Shvoknev, tenor); Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra/Vasily Petrenko
Avie AV2121 (F) (DDD) TT: 37:07 + 45:37 (2 CDs)
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Veniamin Fleishman (1913-1941), a Soviet Jew, died at twenty-eight as a soldier during World War II. He left only this score, a one-act opera somewhat incomplete. His composition professor, Dmitri Shostakovich, completed the work in 1943, the only time Shostakovich performed such a service.

Based on a short story by Chekhov, Rothschild's Violin concerns a coffin-maker and violinist in the town orchestra, "Bronza" Ivanov. He gets mad at the conductor and storms out of rehearsal, vowing never to return. When he returns home to his dying wife, he realizes that he will have to make an expensive coffin for her, and the business is failing. Rothschild, a flutist in the orchestra, drops by to persuade him to return and gets thrown out for his pains. The coffin-maker then ruminates on his life and realizes that his only pleasure had been playing violin in the orchestra. Rothschild returns to try to persuade the man to return, and the coffin-maker hands him his violin. Chekhov goes on to end the story in the following way. From the day Rothschild received the instrument, he gave up the flute entirely. When he played what Ivanov played, people wept, enjoyed the weeping, and hired him to play it again.

To me one of the saddest ever written, the story reminds me of Job's laments without the final transcendence. Yet it has its subtle comic moments. After all, nothing -- not even taxes -- is as certain as death, and yet the only coffin-maker in town can't make a go of things, despite the inevitable pool of clients.

The music, as you might expect, displays elements of Shostakovich's style, but with an emphasis on klezmer, years before Shostakovich himself became interested in Russian Jewish musical folklore. In that sense, as the liner notes point out, the pupil likely influenced the teacher. Fleishman also matches, I think, Shostakovich's psychological acuity, though he falls short of the other's musical incisiveness and the libretto loses some of Chekhov's finest moments in the interests of dramatic concision. The finest measures of the piece occur at the end, when Shostakovich alone brings the little opera to a close with a four-to-six-minute instrumental. On the other hand, he dilutes the drama by tacking on this brilliant set piece, not particularly germane either to the opera or to the original short story.

Shostakovich's Gamblers, based on the Gogol play, stands as a testimony to the composer's tough-mindedness. The hostility to his first opera, The Nose, and the fiasco over Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District might have made any composer gun-shy about undertaking another opera, but Shostakovich loved the Gogol and determined to set every word of the play as the author had written it. After setting about a seventh of the play, he wound up with over three-quarters of an hour and realized that the opera would run way too long. Rather than fail to carry through his original plan, he abandoned the opera for good.

He left us with a fascinating fragment of cheaters cheating cheaters. The music is of consistently high quality and inspiration. The forty-five minutes flies by. Such an opera four times the length of this fragment wouldn't tax anybody. You can tell Shostakovich is a born dramatist and storyteller, because this bit leaves you hungry for more.

The performances are decent. The singers, all Russian, tend to either woof or bleat, although mezzo Elena Gabouri and baritone Peter Danailov stand out as notable exceptions. Nevertheless, I greatly prefer this to Italianate singers -- a matter of dramatic realism (versus a near-abstract notion of Beauty) far more suitable to these two stories. The orchestra plays crisp and clear.

S.G.S. (February 2008)