Boston Symphony Orchestra Perform Soviet Era Classic & More
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Monday, 28 April 2025 14:12
- Written by Jack Angstreich
Photo by Chris Lee
At the wonderful Stern Auditorium, on the night of Wednesday, April 23rd, I had the pleasure of attending an excellent concert presented by Carnegie Hall—the first of two on consecutive days—featuring the Boston Symphony Orchestra under the distinguished direction of Andris Nelsons.
The event began splendidly with a marvelous realization—featuring the superb soloist Mitsuko Uchida—of Ludwig van Beethoven’s extraordinary Piano Concerto No. 4 in G Major, Op. 58, completed in 1806. The initial, Allegro moderato movement begins with the hushed playing of the solo piano; with the entrance of the orchestra, the music increases in intensity. Throughout much of this movement, the music has an almost celestial quality and it closes grandly. The ethos of the ensuing Andante co moto is somewhat starker and it ends inwardly and very quietly. Contrastingly, the Rondo finale, marked Vivace, is ebullient but with some song-like moments, and it concludes triumphantly.
The second half of the evening was comparably memorable, an admirable account of Dmitri Shostakovich’s ambitious, seldom performed, Symphony No. 15 in A Major, Op. 141, from 1971—it stood favorably, measured against the recent rendition in late February of the same work played by the New York Philharmonic and conducted by Santtu-Matias Rouvali. Shostakovich commented on the piece as follows:
I was composing in the hospital, then I left the hospital and continued writing at my summer house—I just could not tear myself away from it. It’s one of those works that just completely carried me away, and maybe even one of my few compositions that seemed completely clear to me from the first note to the last.
The accomplished scholar of Soviet music—especially that of Sergei Prokofiev—Harlow Robinson, in a useful note on the program states:
To his close friend Isaac Glikman, the composer joked ironically that the 15th Symphony was “turning out to be lacking in ideals” (“bezideinaya”), a label often applied by Communist Party officials to work they found politically deficient.
The symphony is more purely “abstract” and enigmatic music than Shostakovich had recently written in the symphonic form, and is more rhapsodic in structure. The first movement, Allegretto, combines the manic energy of the William Tell motif with a humorous, sarcastic character recalling some of the composer’s early works; the composer called it, perhaps ironically, “just a toy shop.” In the somber, mournful second movement, the orchestral forces are often reduced to chamber size and to solo voices. A funeral march builds to a massive climax with large percussion forces before receding into a heavenly calm. Squealing and laughing woodwinds dominate the grotesque, darkly humorous scherzo, creating a sort of frantic dance atmosphere.
The first movement opens somewhat playfully—it amusingly quotes Gioachino Rossini’s famous Overture to his opera, William Tell—and remains so—it is eccentric but almost rushed at times. The succeeding Adagio is solemn, even lugubrious, while the Allegretto third movement is also quirky, even uncanny, but jocular too—it closes abruptly and unexpectedly. The annotator describes the finale thus:
The fourth movement opens with three references to Richard Wagner, beginning with the “fate” motif from the Ring cycle. The solo timpani line that follows suggests the rhythm of “Siegfried’s Funeral March” from the last Ring opera, Götterdämmerung.And the three notes (A-F-E) played by the first violins at the end of the introductory Adagio echo the opening notes of the Tristan and Isolde Prelude. In the Allegretto, a pleasantly lyrical theme meanders through thinly scored string, woodwind, and brass passages. Then the mood darkens with the entry of the sinister marching passacaglia in the low strings. Eventually the lyrical theme joins in, and then again the Wagnerian motif. The relentless passacaglia theme builds to what Krzystof Meyer has described as a “soul-searing climax,” and then the music begins to fade and fragment into a weirdly ethereal coda, reminiscent of the Fourth Symphony, with knocking instruments tapping out what sounds like the ticking of a clock pronouncing the end of time, or asking a question.
Th artists, deservedly, were enthusiastically applauded.