Two Shostakovich 7ths

Somebody stop me, I'm about to do something malicious: I'm going to compare two performances of this symphony and say why I prefer one.

Here is the first: Marin Alsop conducting the Frankfurt Radio Orchestra:

For this particular exercise you don't have to listen to the whole thing, the first five minutes will do.

Now the second performance: Valery Gergiev conducting the Orchestra of the Mariinsky Theatre.

Both of these are terrific orchestras and the solos are really excellent. Listen to the piccolo player with the Frankfurt band from the 5:45 minute mark. You may find Gergiev's conducting style to be odd with all his twitchy, wiggly beats--plus he is literally conducting using a toothpick! Alsop is more conventional with clear, disciplined baton technique.

But for me it is no contest at all: Gergiev and the Mariinsky have by far the better performance. Is it that they have the advantage of being Russian playing Russian music? That might be part of it. But the Frankfurters are a terrific orchestra. In May 2017 I heard them playing the Rite of Spring by Russian Igor Stravinsky in Madrid and it was terrific, conducted by Andrés Orozco-Estrada. So you don't actually have to be Russian, though it may help.

Here is how I would characterize the differences: from the moment he steps on the podium, Gergiev is in some kind of elemental musical space. He and the orchestra rip into the opening with fervor and despair. I say despair, because this is a serious symphony and they play it with a very serious demeanor. Alsop, on the other hand is cheery and personable, shaking hands with both concert-master and assistant concert-master, smiling at the audience and bowing a few times. Her opening is fine: tidy, organized, with really, really, really even sixteenth notes. "Tidy rhythms, tidy rhythms," I can almost hear her exclaiming to the orchestra in rehearsal. But we are already in the wrong space. Shostakovich and this piece in particular, is not about tidy rhythms. It is about existential terror. As Nick Harnoncourt said in a quite different context, all notes are not created equal.

Mariinsky with Gergiev don't have time to make their sixteenth notes all perfectly even--they are playing Shostakovich for Christ's sake and those sixteenths are about suffering, not about tidiness. Go listen to Gergiev's opening again. That first beat feels ripped from the depths of hell and the following passages are still trailing fire and brimstone. Alsop? Nope, still tidy. Yes, the lyrical sections are nice, I mentioned that wonderful piccolo player (even notice how many great solos Shostakovich gives to the flute and piccolo?), but she has framed the whole aesthetic space so narrowly that the performance never plumbs the depths.

The difference between a good performance and a great performance is huge, actually. In the one the performers get inside the music somehow and it just seems to spill out of them in a glorious torrent. In the other, everything is very capably played, the rhythms and notes are all very correct and the performers never actually get inside. Maybe great performances are not something we hear every day, or every year even, but it is the hope of hearing one that makes us go to concerts.