A gift from 'Boom' -- Lamsma plays Shostakovich

A live recording of Shostakovich's first violin concerto

My favorite classical music critic was Vadim Batitsky, who under the pen name of “Boom” wrote the Boom’s Dungeon music blog. He only revealed his real name when he realized he was dying from a terminal illness. Although he was more fond of atonal and twelve tone music than I generally am, his blog archive remains stimulating reading.

Aside from his blog, Boom showed his intense interest in classical music by collecting and sharing live performances, apparently recorded over the radio. He shared these recordings both on the blog and with his friends. To be clear, he did not share pirated commercial recordings, only live performances.

One of the recordings that he shared was a Simone Lamsma performance, with the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra, of Dmitri Shostakovich’s first violin concerto. I love the recording and listen to it often. You can download my copy here.

If you like the recording, you should certainly purchase, or at least stream, Lamsma’s commercial recording of the same work with James Gaffigan and the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra. I’ve been listening to it a lot on Freegal, the public library music streaming service. You can watch a short video (about three minutes) of Lamsma and Gaffigan discussing the concerto.

It was Andrew Morris, writing on Twitter, who wrote, “I'm currently listening to the Passacaglia from Shostakovich's 1st Violin Concerto, and it is astounding to me that that came out of someone's brain.” True enough, but I love the rest of the work, too, particularly the first movement.