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Film and the Arts
Boston Symphony Orchestra Plays the Music of Dmitri Shostakovich
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- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Wednesday, 07 May 2025 13:48
- Written by Jack Angstreich
Photo by Richard Termine
At the terrific Stern Auditorium, on the night of Thursday, April 24th, I was fortunate in attending another fine concert presented by Carnegie Hall—the second of two on consecutive days—featuring the Boston Symphony Orchestra under the admirable direction of Andris Nelsons, playing music of Dmitri Shostakovich.
The event started strikingly with a superior rendition of the powerful Cello Concerto No. 1 in E-flat Major, Op. 107, with the renowned, enormously popular soloist, Yo-Yo Ma. The opening of the initial, Allegretto movement is somewhat playful but with serious undercurrents; the music quickly turns suspenseful and more fraught, even sinister, with propulsive rhythms—it ends suddenly and forcefully. The ensuing Moderato is graceful, if solemn, and the music increases in intensity, culminating in what the program annotator Harlow Robinson describes as a “ghostly duet” between the cello and the celesta; the movement concludes very quietly. The third movement, an extended cadenza for the soloist, is also somber, and slow at first, but it becomes quite agitated, seamlessly transitioning to the lively finale, marked Allegro con moto—this has ludic elements but a sense of gravity pervades it and it too closes abruptly, if emphatically. Abundant applause elicited a delightful encore from Ma along with some of the ensemble’s cellists: the traditional Yiddish song, "Moyshele,” arranged by Blaise Déjardin.
It was the second half of the evening that was truly memorable, however: a sterling realization of the intriguing, seldom performed Symphony No. 11 in G Minor, Op. 103, “The Year 1905,” completed in 1957. The annotator comments:
“I have great affection for this period in our national history, so vividly expressed in revolutionary workers’ songs of the time,” wrote Shostakovich. In the Symphony No. 11, he incorporated the tunes of seven different revolutionary folk songs, tunes from his own Ten Poems (1951), and a quote from Soviet composer Georgy Sviridov’s 1951 operetta Bright Lights. This use of imported material was a notable departure from Shostakovich’s usual practice.
He adds:
The first movement (“Palace Square”) portrays the merciless inhumanity of autocracy. Its powerful opening casts a hypnotic spell, evocative of autocracy, the cold, and the austere expanse of stone around the Winter Palace. This episode returns throughout the symphony as a kind of refrain. Then the movement introduces two prison songs (“Listen” and “The Convict”). The second movement (“The Ninth of January”) depicts the Cossacks’ assault, using two marching songs (“O Tsar, Our Father” and “Bare Your Heads!”). Meditative and requiem-like, the third movement (“In Memoriam”) unfolds variations of a well-known tribute to fallen heroes (“You’ve Fallen Victim”) over a slow ostinato foundation. Four different fast marching tunes (“Rage, O Tyrants”; “The Varsovienne”; “Comrades, the Bugles Are Sounding”; and Sviridov’s tune) combine in the raucous, percussive finale (“The Tocsin”). Several of the songs appear in multiple movements. Adding to the overall sense of unity, the four movements are played attacca, without pause.
The opening movement begins softly and soberly and sustains an almost meditative mood throughout—although it becomes more urgent as it progresses—while in the following one, the music becomes turbulent and builds to a climax. The third movement is elegiac and lugubrious and the finale is exciting, dramatic and energetic, with a driving momentum, if with more subdued passages—it concludes triumphantly.
The artists merited and received a standing ovation.
New York Philharmonic Performs Bartók at Lincoln Center
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- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Wednesday, 07 May 2025 13:22
- Written by Jack Angstreich
Photo by Brandon Patoc
At Lincoln Center’s excellent David Geffen Hall on the night of Saturday, April 26th, I had the exceptional pleasure to attend a marvelous concert featuring the New York Philharmonic under the brilliant direction of the extraordinary Iván Fischer, the founder and leader of the amazing Budapest Festival Orchestra and one of the greatest living conductors.
The event started appealingly with an effective rendition of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s popular Overture from his magnificent opera, The Magic Flute. In useful notes for the program, James M. Keller—who is the “former New York Philharmonic Program Annotator; San Francisco Symphony program annotator; and author of Chamber Music: A Listener's Guide,” published by Oxford University Press—comments about Mozart and the piece as follows:
He finished almost all of Die Zauberflöte during the spring and early summer of 1791, but several numbers (including the Overture) remained to be written when, in July, he was invited to compose an opera, to Metastasio's already much-used libretto La clemenza di Tito, for the festivities surrounding the coronation in Prague of Emperor Leopold II as King of Bohemia.
A solemn Adagio introduction precedes an ebullient, “fugal Allegro, the theme of which seems to have been borrowed (consciously or not) from a piano sonata by Muzio Clementi,” according to Keller; this is interrupted by another serious passage before a mostly exhilarating, concluding section.
The splendid soloist, Lisa Batiashvili—who looked lovely in a beautiful, bright yellow gown—then joined the musicians for a terrific performance of Mozart’s superb Violin Concerto in A Major, K. 219, the “Turkish,” from 1775. The initial, Allegro aperto movement begins charmingly, after which the solo violin enters lyrically. For all its gracefulness, the movement at moments attains an intensity that anticipates that of Ludwig van Beethoven; it closes somewhat abruptly, but affirmatively. (The notes explain that “Mozart did not provide cadenzas for this concerto” and that in this movement, the soloist “played a cadenza written by Tsotne Zedginidze, a 15-year-old composer/pianist from Georgia who is a participant in the Lisa Batiashvili Foundation.”)
The ensuing Adagio is more playful than usual for a slow movement by Mozart, but it too features aria-like passages for the soloist and plumbs greater emotional depths as it unfolds; it closes elegantly. The enchanting Rondeau finale, marked Tempo di Menuetto—is appropriately dance-like, with numerous dynamic episodes, and is often sparkling but also has more profound currents; it ends gently, if suddenly. (In this movement, the soloist played a cadenza that she composed.)
The second half of the evening was at least equally as strong and as memorable: a sterling account of Béla Bartók’s outstanding ballet score, The Wooden Prince: A Dancing-Play in One Act, to a Libretto by Béla Balázs, Op. 13. Keller records that:
Among the considerable output of Béla Bartók we find only three works for the stage: the opera Bluebeard's Castle (1911, revised through 1918), the ballet The Wooden Prince (1914–16, orchestrated in 1917), and the pantomime The Miraculous Mandarin (1918–19, orchestrated in 1924).
He adds:
The Budapest Opera had approached Bartók in March 1913 about writing a ballet that they might consider producing, but it wasn't until the following year that the composer, who was in the backcountry collecting folk songs just then, began work on The Wooden Prince, which he started in April 1914 and then set aside for another two years. In April 1916 his Two Portraits for Orchestra (Op. 15, from 1907–08) received a belated premiere, and the excellent performance on that occasion catapulted him back into working mode. Within a few months The Wooden Prince was substantially completed, and by January 1917 it was fully orchestrated — very fully indeed, we might say, given the size of the orchestra employed.
He goes on to describe the scenario:
In Bartók's work a Prince, wandering in a forest, spies a Princess, who has just been confined to her castle by the Fairy of Nature. Unable to reach her, the Prince carves a puppet from his wooden staff and thrusts it high into the air, trying to attract the Princess's attention. He adorns it with his robe, then his crown, but only when he cuts off his curly hair and affixes it to the puppet does the Princess show interest. She leaves her castle but lavishes all her attention on the “wooden prince” rather than the real one, who stands by in abject frustration. The Fairy, who is monitoring all of this, causes the puppet to dance about, to the Princess's delight. Eventually, the Fairy takes pity on the lovelorn Prince and reverses the influences. Suddenly the Prince himself appeals to the Princess more, but Nature sees to it that she must also sacrifice something to achieve love, just as the Prince sacrificed his curly locks. She gives up her crown, and the Fairy elevates the couple into the realm of love. The dreamlike substance found in symbolism invites interpretation, and Balázs suggested one possibility:
The wooden puppet, which my prince makes in order to make his presence known to the princess, is an act of creation, embodying everything that an artist has to give, until it is perfectly and brilliantly lustrous, but leaving the artist himself empty and bereft. I was thinking here of the deep tragedy that artists frequently experience when an act of creation becomes a rival of the creator, and of the painful glory when a woman prefers the poem to the poet, the picture to the painter.
Balázs, who authored the libretto for Bluebeard’s Castle, alsowrote a collection of fairytales praised by Thomas Mann as a “beautiful book,” as well as poetry, drama, an autobiographical novel, screenplays, film criticism and theory, and a work on the aesthetics of death.
As for the music, which resists summary, it is mysterious, evocative, haunting and sometimes ludic.
The artists deservedly received a standing ovation.
April '25 Digital Week IV
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- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Wednesday, 30 April 2025 23:53
- Written by Kevin Filipski
Boston Symphony Orchestra Perform Soviet Era Classic & More
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- 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.
