Shostakovitch felt interest for the Cinema in a date so early as 1929, when producer Grigori Kozintsev comissioned him with the music for New Babylon. Since then, the relationship between the great russian composer and the Film World was permanent, even in the darkest years of the stanilism, to conclude, in 1970, with his last collaboration with Kozintsev and the shakesperian world with King Lear. Curiously, as it also happens with Hamlet for which he compose incidental music (1932 and 1954) and film music (1964), Kozintsev himself had appeal to Shostakovitch in 1941 for a first scenic approximation to King Lear. Joined in a record, for the first time, the two visions of the russian genius to the same play unveil clear and significant differences: the incidental music, composed at the beginning of the postwar time and under full stalinist control, turns out to be light and aseptic, maybe a little bit distant to Shakespeare's tragedy, and includes one of Shostakovitch's usual sarcastic versions of popular themes, this time no less than the famous christmas-song Jingle Bells, here included as one of the Ten Fool's Songs. By the opposite, the film music is a serious, well-thought and profoundly dramatic work, very in the mood of the musical style of the russian composer's last years; on it, the sadness and despair of Lear's tragedy, as well his madness and terror, are perfectly represented along its development. M.A.F.

King Lear - Incidental Music, op.58A (1941) - 25:53
King Lear - Film Music, op.137 (1970) - 27:40
Rundfunk Symphonie Orchester, Berlin - Conductor: Michail Jurowski
CAPRICCIO 10397 / 54'