I'm still listening to the Shostakovich symphonies filmed by Valery Gergiev with the Orchestra of the Mariinsky Theater six or seven years ago. I continue to be deeply impressed. You can tell so much just by the demeanor of the performers. Watch how Gergiev walks on stage, bows and turns to the orchestra. This is a deeply committed conductor and orchestra. There is a good blend of ages in the personnel with a few seasoned performers and quite a few younger musicians. This is the kind of diversity that actually makes sense. And yes, there are lots of women of all ages. I notice a lot of criticism of performances that focuses on one or two details. While this may make the critic look good, it usually fails to capture what is really going on. The Mariinsky Orchestra is certainly not the tidiest I have ever heard, but they really know this music and play it with total commitment. By that I mean they dig into every phrase, every dynamic and don't take the safest path. With Shostakovich, why would you?
I have been listening with close attention to the Shostakovich symphonies for over twenty years now, ever since I took a graduate seminar that covered them. Back then there was little secondary literature apart from a series of brief articles in the Musical Times covering their premieres in Western Europe. There wasn't yet a good biography of Shostakovich but there was the very unreliable one by Solomon Volkov titled Testimony, which I don't recommend. This has now been addressed with several books on Shostakovich's life and works. What we still don't have is an in-depth understanding of his style and practice. The music of Shostakovich does not readily respond to the technical tools that we have at our disposal so we will have to wait until a couple of brilliant theorists figure out what he was doing as happened with Stravinsky--but that was not until sixty and more years after the pieces were written. We are likely on schedule to have a good understanding of how Shostakovich worked by, oh, the 2030s or so.
But after listening to the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh, Eleventh and Thirteenth Symphonies in this recent recording there are a couple of things I am sure of: it is certainly a help watching a good film of the performances as it enables you to sort out certain things about the orchestration. For example, when I saw a live performance of the Fourteenth Symphony last summer in Salzburg, I saw how he was getting certain kinds of dry sounds from the strings: he had them divisi with half the players playing col legno and the other half pizzicato. Not a sound I have ever heard before!
The other thing I am sure of is that Shostakovich is a really great symphonist right up there on a level with anyone you could name: Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, Mahler or Sibelius, all of whom are great symphonists. From his Fourth Symphony on, Shostakovich is really spectacular with an incredibly wide range of texture, style and emotion. Sometimes he sounds like a French farce, as in the second scherzo of the Symphony No. 6. Sometimes he evokes the depths of hell as in places in the Seventh and Eighth Symphonies. Many places he creates new kinds of beauty we have never heard before. And always, lurking in the background, is his uniquely sardonic sense of humor.
In these turbulent and difficult times, I find it a great consolation that someone like Shostakovich could write music such as this as he lived through times even more challenging. For years he kept a packed suitcase by the door of his apartment in case the secret police came for him in the middle of the night. He had friends and in-laws that were sent to Siberia or simply executed without trial. It is also heartening that a fine conductor and ensemble such as these can devote so much time and energy to giving us very fine performances.
No comments:
Post a Comment