Rodion Shchedrin: Carmen Suite; Concerto for Players No. 1, “Naughty Limericks”; Concerto for Orchestra No. 2, “The Chimes”
Russian National Orchestra/Mikhail Pletnev
Deutsche Grammophon 471 136-2 [61:48]
Shchedrin’s Carmen Suite has been kicking around concert halls for decades now—sometimes to puzzled looks, occasionally to outright hostility, but increasingly to the kind of enthusiastic reception that greets genuinely original thinking.
The leader’s presence feels palpable even in this studio setting.
And make no mistake: this 1967 ballet score, created for Maya Plisetskaya (who happened to be Shchedrin’s wife), represents an act of creative audacity that transcends mere arrangement. What Shchedrin did was strip Bizet down to strings and percussion. That’s it.
No winds — no brass in the conventional sense—though the percussion battery is formidable, deployed with a sophistication that would make Varèse nod in approval. The result shouldn’t work. Bizet’s orchestration, after all, is part of the opera’s very DNA, those woodwind arabesques and trumpet fanfares as essential as the melodies themselves.
Yet Shchedrin’s reimagining breathes with such fierce vitality, such rhythmic propulsion and timbral invention, that you forget what’s missing. The famous “Habanera” becomes something almost sinister here, col legno battuto creating a skeletal clatter beneath the melody. The “Toreador Song” swaggers with pizzicato violence.
Pletnev and his superb Russian National Orchestra recorded this in Moscow during February and March 1998, and the engineering captures both the bite of the string attacks and the massive dynamic range these forces command. Listen to the way the lower strings dig into their phrases in “Torero”—there’s a controlled ferocity here, an edge that never quite tips into shrillness but keeps you leaning forward. The percussion work is spectacular, articulated with a clarity that lets you hear inside Shchedrin’s complex rhythmic cells.
The two concertos for orchestra make for fascinating companions. The first, those “Naughty Limericks” from 1963, is exactly what the title promises—brash, vulgar in the best sense, a Soviet-era take on American jazz energy filtered through Russian maximalism. Shchedrin throws everything at the wall: pounding piano ostinatos, whooping brass, a xylophone that won’t shut up.
It’s exhausting and exhilarating in equal measure. Some will find it dated, too redolent of a particular Cold War moment when Western influences were being cautiously absorbed and enthusiastically distorted. Fair enough.
But there’s genuine wit here, and the sheer orchestral virtuosity required—Pletnev’s players handle the rapid-fire articulations with aplomb—commands respect. The second Concerto, “The Chimes” (1968), stakes out completely different territory. Written for Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic, it opens with those slow-moving chords the original liner notes mention—a kind of frozen landscape, harmonically ambiguous, that gradually thaws into something more urgent.
The bell sounds that give the work its title aren’t merely decorative; they function structurally, marking formal divisions and creating what Shchedrin called “a very particular feature of old Russian civilization.” Whether you buy that nationalist rhetoric or not, the sonic effect is undeniable. When those bells cut through the orchestral texture—sometimes actual bells, sometimes bell-like sonorities created by other means—they create moments of genuine transcendence. What strikes me most about this disc is how well it reveals Shchedrin’s range.
The Carmen Suite shows his gift for reimagining existing material with genuine originality. The “Naughty Limericks” reveal his playful side, his willingness to risk bad taste in pursuit of visceral impact. “The Chimes” proves he could write music of genuine depth and atmospheric power.
Not all of it will be to every taste—the first Concerto’s relentless energy may exhaust some listeners, while others might find “The Chimes” too diffuse, its architecture less clear than its moment-to-moment effects. But Pletnev never falters. He understands this music from the inside, knows when to push and when to let the textures speak for themselves.
The Russian National Orchestra plays with a technical security and stylistic authority that make the case for Shchedrin as persuasively as one could wish. Deutsche Grammophon’s engineering serves them well—spacious yet detailed, with enough warmth to prevent the percussion from turning clinical. This is essential listening for anyone interested in post-Shostakovich Russian music.
Shchedrin may lack his predecessor’s tragic depth, but he compensates with sheer inventiveness and an ear for orchestral color that few composers of his generation could match. Recommended without reservation.
