Political and Artistic Knockout Punch

Shostakovich's fifteen symphonies have become something of a house specialty for the Toronto Symphony Orchestra in recent years.  Although some have not yet appeared on the programmes, I'd certainly highlight the word "yet".  After seeing that the 8th and 13th Symphonies were placed less than a month apart this spring, I strongly suspect that Maestro Peter Oundjian is working through a plan to introduce all fifteen to Toronto audiences.  More power to him, say I!

And more power was precisely what we got on Friday with the orchestra's performance of the song-symphony # 13, a work of rare and biting political intent concealed thinly by more historical and satirical preoccupations.

I'll be writing in more detail about this music at a future date to be determined in my rare music blog, Off the Beaten Staff.  In the meantime, though, here are my thoughts about the live performance.

I'll deal first with the work which in more modern showbiz parlance would be called "the opener", although Mozart is certainly very much more than a mere also-ran!  His fifth violin concerto is often referred to as the "Turkish concerto" because one episode in the lengthy rondo finale launches dramatically into the rhythmic sounds colloquially known in central Europe as "Turkish music" at the time the concerto was written.

Soloist Julian Rachlin joined the orchestra under guest conductor Andrey Boreyko for this concerto.  The body of orchestral strings was fairly sizable for Mozart, but not so much as to unbalance the work as a whole.  The orchestral opening, presenting two major themes, was marked by the sharpest dynamic contrasts -- apt, of course, since the score calls for snap changes from forte to piano and back again.  But I felt Boreyko overplayed his hand a bit, snapping from fortissimo to pianissimo and return, a little too Romantic in scale for Mozart although undoubtedly exciting.  

Rachlin's first entry in the sweet, lyrical, and totally unexpected adagio interlude was all one could wish, and from that point on the partnership of solo and orchestra proceeded on much more Mozartian lines.  Rachlin's cadenza again developed a Romantic fervour which seemed at odds with the much more straight-forward playing of the final coda.

The slower second movement and the brisk (but not over-brisk) Rondo finale were both delightful.  The famous (or infamous) A minor "Turkish" episode in the Rondo was given crisply, without undue exaggeration of tempo, but with an air of fierce savagery which created a huge contrast with the main Rondo theme before and after.  This was due not least to the very emphatic col legno (played with the wood of the bow instead of the bow hair) of the cellos and double basses.  The final little trill of the main Rondo theme vanished into the air at the end with a nod and a wink, exactly as it should.

And now for the Shostakovich.  Before going on to discuss the actual performance, I have a bone to pick with the management.  Including the complete text in both Russian and English in the programme booklet was desirable, as always with a vocal work, but putting the original language only in the Cyrillic alphabet made it useless to anyone who doesn't read that script.  The poems by Yevgeny Yevtushenko together create an outline portrait of the effects of tyranny in the Soviet Union.

Musicologists disagree as to whether this work is a true symphony or rather a song-cycle accompanied by orchestra.  I can't imagine why.  Friday night's performance had a weight and power that were truly symphonic in scope, as indeed is the score as a whole.  Full credit goes for this to the performers under Boreyko's inspired direction, bass soloist Petr Migunov (making his Toronto Symphony debut) and the choral basses of the Amadeus Choir and the Elmer Iseler Singers.  Yes, you did read that correctly -- only bass voices.  The darkness of sound is most certainly no accident -- and it's not just because Russia is replete with good bass singers!  Shostakovich wrote the work during the same time that he prepared new performing editions of several of Mussorgsky's vocal works, and there's no question that Mussorgsky -- particularly the Mussorgsky of Boris Godunov -- sprang to my mind in several passages of this performance.  

The lengthy first movement -- "Babi Yar" -- set the scale through the tension generated by Boreyko in the funereal introduction, with its slow moving chords and gentle tolling of a single bell.  The long monotone "recitations" by soloist and chorus were sung with genuine tension in spite of the quietness of much of the music; the loud eruptions of sound then created a shocking contrast.  As the poet describes the massacre of Babi Yar, he imagines himself in turn in the Old Testament captivity in Egypt, as Alfred Dreyfus unjustly condemned to penal servitude, as a child during a nineteenth century pogrom, and as Anne Frank.  Here above all was the place where a transliterated Russian text could have been really helpful.  What was clear was that the singers and players alike were strongly characterizing the different contrasting sections.  Throughout, Boreyko sustained that tension in a clear line stretching right to the final stroke of the remorseless funeral bell.

Note:  For political reasons, Yevtushenko was forced 
to rewrite parts of "Babi Yar" after the 
symphony's premiere, and the rewritten lines 
were then fitted into the work.  

However, this performance used the work's original text.

The sardonic second-movement scherzo, "Humour", brought relief as the soloist adopted a mocking facial expression which aptly mirrored the words -- a poem about how humour can't be bought or silenced but will always outlast anyone who tries to defeat it, including tsars, kings, and emperors.  Migunov adeptly managed the various abrupt turns and leaps which now appeared in the vocal line.

The third movement sets a poem entitled "At the Store", a portrait of tired women in shawls, clutching handfuls of hard-earned cash, and lining up to purchase whatever is available that day.  Here the orchestra took on an a appropriately grey, almost monochromatic sound, differences in tone colour studiously avoided.  Sympathy for the women was evoked by the more human, melodic sounds now coming from the singers, and above all by the concluding cadence, the one and only spot in the entire symphony where the chorus divides into harmonized parts.

The fourth movement begins with the line "Fears are dying out in Russia", but every bar of the music undermines this apparent certainty with tonal ambiguity, with dramatic contrasts, with sudden explosions of sound and as sudden collapses into monotone quiet and unease.  Here above all Boreyko had the measure of what could easily become a bitty, disconnected mess, and the entire movement built inevitably to the final bars.

The programme note writer referred to the last movement ("A Career") as a "quasi-hopeful" elevation of morality, but the music plainly gives the lie to that idea.  Although it begins with a sunny duet between two flutes (beautifully played), this quickly becomes another one of Shostakovich's ironic, mordant scherzando pieces and Migunov made that abundantly clear in his tone of voice, and his biting enunciation of the text.   The tuba solo here was finely played, and the rude shrieks from the trumpets were all you could ask -- although certainly not "good" playing!

Throughout the symphony, the singing of the choirs was powerful and evocative, a fitting partner for Migunov's expressive solo work.  The near-capacity audience were swept away by the power of the music and the performance, and rightly so.