Shostakovich & More with The New York Philharmonic

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Reviews

Published on Monday, 03 March 2025 15:48

Written by Jack Angstreich

Photo by Brandon Patoc

At Lincoln Center’s marvelous David Geffen Hall, on the night of Saturday, February 22nd, I had the great pleasure to attend a superb New York Philharmonic concert—continuing an excellent season—brilliantly led by the extraordinary Finnish conductor Santtu-Matias Rouvali.

The event started fabulously with a dazzling account of three delightful selections from the orchestral Suite drawn from Dmitri Shostakovich’s Moscow, Cheryomushki, describedin the fine notes for the program by Christopher H. Gibbs—who is “James H. Ottaway Jr. Professor of Music at Bard College and the co-author, with Richard Taruskin, of The Oxford History of Western Music, College Edition—as “an operetta about perennial hous-ing shortages in the Soviet capital.” He adds:

It takes place in the so-called Bird Cherry Tree district, southwest of Moscow, where the government's response to the crisis was to construct high-rise apartment complexes. The satirical operetta tells the story of a group of prospective young tenants seeking places in the newly subsidized housing and of their skirmishes with corrupt bureaucrats.   

Shostakovich composed the three-act work in 1957–58 to a libretto by the popular humorists Vladimir Mass and Mikhaíl Chervinsky, and it was premiered in January 1959 at the Moscow Operetta Theatre.

He says further that, “In 1997 Andrew Cornall, a producer and record executive then at Decca, crafted a four-movement suite, of which we hear the first three tonight.” In an article for Soviet Music, Shostakovich wrote:

The composition of an operetta is something new for me. Moscow, Cheryomushki is my first and, I hope, not my last experience in this appealing genre. I worked on it with great enthusiasm and lively interest. I think that what should result from our collaborative efforts. ... should be a cheery, upbeat show. ... There is lyricism in it, and “gags,” assorted interludes, dances, and even an entire ballet scene. Parodistic elements are suggested at times in the musical design, the quotation of popular motives from the not-too-distant past, and even from several songs by Soviet authors.

The initial selection, A Spin through Moscow, is effervescent even in its quieter moments, while the second, the exquisite Waltz, is exceedingly charming, with a more romantic character. Finally, Dances, which begins with a polka, is humorous, irrepressible and buoyant.

An outstanding soloist, Seong-Jin Cho, then entered the stage for an amazing performance of Sergei Prokofiev’s terrific Piano Concerto No. 2 in G minor, Op. 16. In his Soviet Diary of 1927, the composer recorded that, “The charges of surface brilliance and certain ‘soccer-player' tendencies in the First Concerto induced me to strive for greater depth in the Second.” The Andantino introduction to the first movement is moody, slightly eccentric and somewhat mysterious; the music becomes more agitated in the highly virtuosic Allegretto section—it features an astonishing cadenza and ends softly. The very brief Scherzo that follows, marked Vivace, is breathless, propulsive and playful in spirit. The ensuing, forceful Intermezzo—its tempo is Allegro moderato—has an almost sinister quality for much of its length, with some reflective passages, but is nonetheless seductive in its rhythms and closes gently, if abruptly. The Finale, marked Allegro tempestoso, is turbulent but dazzling, although again with subdued, meditative interludes; it builds in intensity to a stunning, sudden conclusion. Enthusiastic applause elicited an enchanting encore from Cho: the wonderful second—Menuet—movement of Maurice Ravel’s Sonatine.

The second half of the evening was also memorable: an awesome realization of Shostakovich’s seldom played, powerful, and allusive Symphony No. 15 in A major, Op. 141, from 1971, his last. The opening Allegretto—which jokingly quotes from the famous overture from the opera, William Tell—is quirky, ludic, bustling and energetic; it finishes unexpectedly. Gibbs says about the composer: “He stated that the first movement ‘describes childhood — just a toyshop, with a cloudless sky above,’ and recalled that Rossini's overture was one of his earliest musical memories.” The succeeding, unusual , lugubrious Adagio begins with a brass chorale and continues, according to Gibbs, “with a series of 12-note melodies for solo cello”; it acquires increasing urgency but with subdued episodes and ends in a hushed manner. Next, the short, Allegretto scherzo is burlesque in sensibility—it too closes surprisingly. Gibbs reports that:

The finale opens with the “Fate” brass quotation from Wagner's Ring alternating with a solo timpani pattern from Siegfried's Funeral March in Götterdämmerung. 

This segues into a three-note string pizzicato associated with the “in memorial” section of Shostakovich's own Symphony No. 11, and then to the violins playing the first three notes of Wagner's Tristan und Isolde [ . . . . ]

A very beautiful waltz references Mikhail Glinka’s song, “Do not tempt me needlessly.” Much of the movement is quite solemn and it grows more imposing as it progresses but ends almost ethereally, recalling according to Gibbs, “the conclusion of his suppressed Fourth Symphony.”

The artists deservedly received a standing ovation.