Boston Symphony Orchestra Plays the Music of Dmitri Shostakovich
- Details
- 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.