Shakespeare & Dvořák with the New York Philharmonic

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Reviews

Published on Friday, 31 January 2025 15:16

Written by Jack Angstreich

Daniele Rustioni, photo by Chris Lee

At Lincoln Center’s superior David Geffen Hall, on the night of Thursday, January 9th, I had the privilege to attend another excellent concert—amidst a strong season—presented by the New York Philharmonic, under the distinguished direction of Daniele Rustioni, who debuted with the ensemble with these performances.

The event began brilliantly with one of its highlights, i.e., a sterling account of Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s marvelous, seldom played Overture to The Merchant of Venice, from 1933, after the famous play by William Shakespeare, who—according to the useful program note by Jack Sullivan—was the composer’s “favorite author.” Sullivan adds that he “wrote some 200 film scores, including Gaslight, And Then There Were None, and The Picture of Dorian Gray.” And further, that “He joined the faculty of the Los Angeles Conservatory of Music, becoming an influential teacher who had a huge impact on American music: among his pupils were John Williams, Henry Mancini, Nelson Riddle, André Previn, and Jerry Goldsmith.” And finally:

He composed 11 Shakespeare overtures over a span of two decades, including The Taming of the Shrew, Twelfth Night, Julius Caesar, Coriolanus, The Winter's Tale, A Midsummer Night's Dream, As You Like It, Much Ado About Nothing, King John, and Antony and Cleopatra. He called these “the overtures to operas I will never compose,” though in the late 1950s he did write two Shakespeare operas, All's Well That Ends Well and The Merchant of Venice.

The brilliant and celebrated soloist Joshua Bell then entered the stage for an impressive account of Antonín Dvořák’s rewarding Violin Concerto in A minor, Op. 53, an undervalued work even if it is surpassed in greatness by the composer’s extraordinary Cello Concerto. Annotator James M. Keller provides a detailed background of its genesis:

He wrote it at the instigation of violinist Joseph Joachim, who had played the premiere of Brahms's Violin Concerto on New Year's Day, 1879. After composing the concerto in the late summer of that same year, Dvořák promptly sent it to Joachim, who responded appreciatively and promised that he was “looking forward to inspecting soon, con amore, your work.” In early April 1880 Joachim finally invited Dvořák to meet with him in Berlin, after which the composer embarked on a thorough revision. On May 9 Dvořák wrote to [his publisher Fritz] Simrock (who was eager to be informed of what was going on with the piece):

According to Mr. Joachim's wish I revised the whole Concerto and did not leave a single bar untouched. He will certainly be pleased by that. The whole work will now receive a new face. I kept the themes and added a few new ones, but the whole conception of the work is different. Harmony, orchestration, rhythm — all the development is new. I shall finish it as soon as possible and send it to Mr. Joachim immediately.

This Dvořák did, and there the piece sat again, this time for more than two years. Finally, on August 14, 1882, Joachim dropped a note to the composer:

Recently I made use of some spare time I had to revise the violin part of your Concerto and to make some of the passages, which were too difficult to perform, easier for the instrument. For even though the whole proves that you know the violin very well, from some single details it may still be seen that you yourself have not played for some time. While making this revision I was pleased by the many true beauties of your work, which will be a pleasure for me to perform. Saying this with the utmost sincerity, I may — without the danger of being misunderstood — confess that I still do not think the Violin Concerto in its present shape to be ripe for the public, especially because of its orchestral accompaniment, which is still rather heavy. I should prefer you to find this out by yourself by playing the work with me.

In mid-September 1882 Dvořák accordingly traveled again to Berlin to consult with Joachim, returning two months later for an orchestral reading. Quite a few changes inevitably followed, mostly involving small cuts and lightened orchestration. Simrock's adviser Robert Keller also attended the orchestral run-through and added his two cents, arguing that the first two movements, which Dvořák had laid out as a single, essentially connected span, should be separated entirely. At this Dvořák drew the line. To Simrock he wrote on December 16, 1882:

You know that I esteem this man and can appreciate him, but this time he went too far. The first movement would be too short and cannot be complete in itself: it would be necessary to add a third part and to this — sincerely speaking — I am not inclined. Therefore: first and second movement without any changes, some cuts in the third movement where the main motif in A major appears.

After all this, Joachim did not end up introducing the piece, notwithstanding his involvement in its difficult birth and the fact that his name remained at the head of the score as its dedicatee. The honor of the premiere went instead to František Ondřiček, who went on to premiere it also in Vienna and London and who became the work's most ardent champion. It seems that Joachim never played the piece in public.

The initial, Allegro ma non troppo movement, which opens with a lyrical statement of the primary theme, is largely affirmative and melodious with dramatic and passionate moments, while the ensuing Adagio ma non troppo is song-like and Romantic and closes quietly. The Finale—marked Allegrogiocoso, ma non troppo—is a rondo the principal theme of which is a furiant, a Bohemian folk dance, and a central interlude is a dumka, a Slavonic folk dance; jaunty—even exuberant—and virtuosic, the movement concludes triumphantly. Enthusiastic applause elicited a wonderful encore from Bell, accompanied by harpist Nancy Allen: an arrangement of Frédéric Chopin’s lovely Nocturne in C-sharp.

The second half of the evening was even more remarkable: a magnificent realization of Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s fabulous Symphony No. 4 in F minor, Op. 36. About it, to his pupil and friend the eminent composer Sergei Taneyev, Tchaikovsky wrote: 

Of course my symphony is program music, but it would be impossible to give the program in words. … But ought this not always to be the case with a symphony, the most lyrical of musical forms? Ought it not to express all those things for which words cannot be found but which nevertheless arise in the heart and cry out for expression?

In a letter from the late summer of 1877 to his patroness Nadezhda von Meck, he wrote:

Our symphony progresses. The first movement will give me a great deal of trouble with respect to orchestration. It is very long and complicated: at the same time I consider it the best movement. The three remaining movements are very simple, and it will be easy and pleasant to orchestrate them.

In another letter to von Meck, he described the opening movement:

The introduction is the seed of the whole symphony, undoubtedly the central theme. This is Fate, i.e., that fateful force which prevents the impulse toward happiness from entirely achieving its goal, forever on jealous guard lest peace and well-being should ever be attained in complete and unclouded form, hanging above us like the Sword of Damocles, constantly and unremittingly poisoning the soul. Its force is invisible, and can never be overcome. Our only choice is to surrender to it, and to languish fruitlessly. … When all seems lost, there appears a sweet and gentle daydream. Some blissful, radiant human image hurries by and beckons us away. … No! These were dreams, and fate wakes us from them. Thus all life is an unbroken alternation of harsh reality with fleeting dreams and visions of happiness … There is no escape. … We can only drift upon this sea until it engulfs and submerges us in its depths. That, roughly, is the program of the first movement.

The movement starts with a stirring fanfare that recurs throughout it, but much of it has a lugubrious quality, although there are lighter passages that alternate with more emotionally charged ones; it finishes forcefully. The second movement, marked Andantino in modo di canzona, is charming but also melancholic, with a beautiful main theme; it increases in intensity, ending softly. The brief Scherzo, an Allegro, is not unexpectedly more playful, even ebullient. The Allegro con fuoco Finale has a brash beginning and is dynamic in the extreme, although with more subdued interludes; it ultimately builds to an exhilarating—even extravagant—climax.

The artists deservedly received a standing ovation.

New York Philharmonic Play Dmitri Shostakovich

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Reviews

Published on Friday, 31 January 2025 14:42

Written by Jack Angstreich

Keri-Lynn Wilson directing the New York Philharmonic. Photo by Chris Lee

At Lincoln Center’s excellent David Geffen Hall, on the night of Thursday, December 5th, I had the considerable pleasure to attend a fabulous concert of Soviet orchestral music presented by the New York Philharmonic under the very impressive direction of Keri-Lynn Wilson, in her debut with this ensemble.

The event started superbly with a dazzling account of Dmitri Shostakovich irresistible and irrepressible Festive Overture, Op. 96, from 1954. The orchestra’s concertmaster, Frank Huang, then entered the stage for a highly creditable performance of Sergei Prokofiev’s incomparable Violin Concerto No. 2 in G minor, Op. 63, from 1935. In his Short Autobiography from 1939-41, the composer wrote about it as follows:

Reflecting my nomadic concertizing experience the concerto was written in the most diverse countries: the main subject of the first movement was written in Paris, the first theme of the second movement in Voronezh, the instrumentation was completed in Baku, and the premiere took place in December of 1935 in Madrid. 

In his useful notes for this program, James M. Keller provides some relevant background on the work:

Prokofiev had already been amassing sketches for some vaguely imagined violin piece when he was approached by some admirers of the French-Belgian violinist Robert Soëtens, who asked for a concerto that their friend might premiere and to which he would maintain exclusive performance rights for a year. Soëtens, a devoted champion of new music, had previously joined with Samuel Dushkin to present the premiere, in 1932, of Prokofiev's Sonata for Two Violins, and Prokofiev was eminently disposed toward providing a follow-up piece. Jascha Heifetz started programming it immediately after Soëtens's year expired, and the concerto has been a staple of the repertoire ever since. Prokofiev initially thought of titling the piece Concert Sonata for Violin and Orchestra, but by the time he finished his composition he gave up that unnecessary complication and called it simply Violin Concerto No. 2, his Violin Concerto No. 1 having been premiered a dozen years earlier. 

The initial, Allegro moderato opens solemnly, even lugubriously—with a theme that returns later on in the movement—and then quickly becomes agitated; much of this movement has an inward quality but it becomes more extroverted, even jaunty, as the tempo accelerates and then becomes recurringly lyrical with numerous, diverse developments before ending quietly and unexpectedly. The second movement, which is a model of elegance, is restrained and also song-like, lovely but not without a playfulness that intensifies; it concludes softly as well. The Allegro ben marcato finale is more forceful if also ludic, even eccentric; it becomes more energetic and then closes abruptly.

The second half of the evening was at least equally memorable: a stunning realization of Shostakovich’s extraordinary  

Symphony No. 10 in E minor, Op. 93, from 1953, performed alongside a screening of what appeared to be a distinguished film—commissioned by the Luzerner Sinfonieorchester and first screened on June 15, 2022, in Lucerne, Switzerland—by the South African artist William Kentridge, who several years ago notably directed and designed a striking Metropolitan Opera production of the composer’s The Nose, after the famous story by Nikolai Gogol, starring Paulo Szot. In May 2022, the filmmaker had this to say about his creation:

The key task … is to find something that does not turn the symphony into film music — a series of images and narratives that overwhelm the music itself; nor to have something that … runs simply as a series of anodyne backdrops. But the story of Shostakovich and his complicated relationship to the state in the Soviet Union … provides the material for thinking visually about the trajectory that Shostakovich had to follow, from the early days of the Soviet Union to the writing of the symphony. This is a retrospective look at … four decades … from the perspective of 1953, when both Stalin died and the first performance of the symphony was presented. In the 1920s there was the death of Lenin; in the 1930s the suicide of Mayakovsky; in the 1940s, the assassination of Trotsky; in the 1950s the death of Stalin — and here we are, almost 70 years later. The report that remains of these decades is in the music of Shostakovich, the one who against expectation got away, and survived. The film is set inside what appears to be an abandoned Soviet museum, which in fact is made of cardboard, on the table in the artist's studio …. Using a miniature camera, we move through the different halls of the museum, which also include a community theater hall, a public swimming pool, a quarry at the side of the main halls of the museum. A corridor of vitrines holding stuffed historical figures. Intertitles in the film are from various sources, but the main source are the plays and poems of Vladimir Mayakovsky — who in the early years following the revolution was an enthusiastic supporter of the Soviet project. But as the years passed and the hopes of the revolution receded, he grew increasingly disillusioned. In 1930 he shot himself. … The central characters of the film are Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin; Shostakovich and his student Elmira Nazirova (about which there are different theories regarding her relationship with Shostakovich and the 10th Symphony and whether her name is embedded into some of the key signatures of the symphony); and Mayakovsky and his lover, Lilya Brik. These characters appear as puppets, but are also performed by actors inside of puppets. The form is one of collage, and the larger proposition is that one needs to understand history as a form of collage. The artistic medium is a way of thinking about the historical events. The task of the project is to try to show within the visual film some of the ambiguities Shostakovich had to negotiate … in all the work that he made. We have to find a way to both acknowledge the independence of the music — that it exists now in the post-Soviet era (we can still feel the emotional journey of the symphony, independent of its historical moorings), but at the same time acknowledge the particular character of the era from which it comes.

About the music, the annotator records the following:

Shostakovich began his Symphony No. 10 only a few months after Stalin's death. Or perhaps earlier; the pianist Tatyana Nikolaeva, one of his confidants, insisted that the symphony — and unquestionably its first movement — dated from 1951, and that the piece, like so many others, was withheld until after Stalin's passing. The symphony scored a notable success at its premiere as well as at follow-up performances in Moscow.

The first, Moderato movement begins very gravely and slowly becomes more animated but no less serious; it builds to a powerful climax before reverting to a subdued manner. The ensuing, very brief Allegro is urgent and propulsive while the succeeding Allegretto is weighty and sober but becomes more insistent and dramatic although it closes gently. The finale too is stark in outlook at its outset but turns livelier with some jocular inflections before concluding rousingly and affirmatively. The artists were enthusiastically applauded, deservedly.

January '25 Digital Week IV

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Reviews

Published on Friday, 31 January 2025 03:27

Written by Kevin Filipski

In-Theater Releases of the Week 

No Other Land 

Inheritance 

Blu-ray Releases of the Week

Supervixens 

No Home Movie