Concert Review: Waking Up From History

Jaap van Zweden leads the Leningrad Symphony.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

City fire marshal Dmitri Shostakovich, Leningrad 1942.
Photographed by a Russian news agency during the siege.

The extraordinary history of the Second World War casts a long shadow on any art music written in Europe in the 1930s and '40s. This week, the New York Philharmonic paired two of these works in a program of extraordinary intensity under music director Jaap van Zweden: a program that seemed to ask the following. Can art music, created under the shadow of extraordinary political and human event, somehow manage to transcend its origins and remain relevant to the audiences of today?

Concert Review: A Totalitarian Eclipse of the Heart

Jakob Hrůša leads the Cleveland Orchestra behind the Iron Curtain.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Conductor Jakob Hrůša in action.Photo by Andreas Herszau from the artist's website © 2016 Andreas Herszau. 

The music of Eastern Europe in the mid-20th century was, for the most part written in an oppressive climate of fear and government control. On Thursday night at Severance Hall, conductor Jakob Hrůša and the Cleveland Orchestra took out their crowbars and lifted the Iron Curtain with a program that shed some light on what music-making was like in a totalitarian (and proletarian) regime.

Recordings Review: This is (Double) Jeopardy!

Boston's Shostakovich cycle with Andris Nelsons continues with No. 4 and No. 11.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Andris Nelsons at the helm of the Boston Symphony Orchestra.
Photo by Marco Borggreve.

Some Shostakovich symphonies are more popular than others. The Fifth (more on that in a minute) and the Tenth (a reaction to the death of Stalin) are relatively optimistic and are programmed by larger orchestras. The Seventh's reputation rests on the occasion of its birth. (It was written under fire as the Nazis attacked Leningrad.) Of the remainder, it is rare indeed to hear an orchestra tackle No. 4 and No. 11, so Andris Nelsons and the Boston Symphony Orchestra are to be accoladed for releasing these two very different and very difficult works together as the latest entry in the conductor's ongoing project: a recorded cycle of the complete Shostakovich symphonies.

Concert Review: Old Stalin's Ghost

The Los Angeles Philharmonic returns to Lincoln Center.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Gustavo Dudamel returned to Lincoln Center with the
Los Angeles Philharmonic on Friday night. Photo courtesy Lincoln Center Press Dept.

The arrival of the sensational conductor Gustavo Dudamel and the Los Angeles Philharmonic is always a cause for celebration at Lincoln Center. Mr. Dudamel remains the leading musical export of Venezuela, the proof that that country's El Sistema program is an entirely successful social experiment in producing quality musicians under difficult circumstances.

Concert Review: The Coming of the Great Darkness

Andris Nelsons and the BSO arrive at Carnegie Hall
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Harvesters of sorrow: Andris Nelsons (left) and Jean-Yves Thibaudet (seated, right)  collaborate on The Age of Anxiety.
Photo from the March 23 concert at Symphony Hall © 2018 The Boston Symphony Orchestra.

The Boston Symphony Orchestra is flourishing under the leadership of music director Andris Nelsons. Ensemble and music director arrived at Carnegie Hall on Wednesday night for the first of three concerts this week, fulfilling their yearly obligation to visit that historic stage and offering New Yorkers a sample of the interesting new directions pursued by this brave and ambitious conductor.

Concert Review: Everything is Awesome!

The St. Petersburg Philharmonic plays Shostakovich.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Yuri Temirkanov has led the St. Petersburg Symphony Orchestra since 1988.
Photo courtesy Medici.tv.

In 1988, Yuri Temirkanov became music director of what was then the Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra. Russia was then the Soviet Union, under the leadership of Andrei Gromyko. Perestroika and Glasnost were just around the corner. On Saturday night, Mr. Temirkanov and his orchestra returned to Carnegie Hall, offering a devoted audience a meat and potatoes program of Brahms and Shostakovich, with the latter's Fifth Symphony among his most popular and politically motivated creations.

Concert Review: On With the Revolution

The Osaka Philharmonic Orchestra plays Shostakovich.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Russian propaganda poster commemorating the rebellion on the battleship Potemkin
and the uprisings of the year 1905.

Like the people of Russia, the Eleventh and Twelfth Symphonies of Dmitri Shostakovich have suffered since their premieres. Composed at the peak of the composer's considerable powers, these pieces as grand public gestures, written to commemorate the start of the Russian Revolution (in the Eleventh) and its triumphant conclusion in the Twelfth. Each symphony is a programmatic work in four movements, requiring enormous orchestral forces and considerable lung power from the woodwinds and brass.

Concert Review: Their Business is Rejoicing

The London Symphony Orchestra at NJPAC.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Miracle man: conductor Gianandrea Noseda in action.
Photo © 2016 Teatro Regio di Torino.

The London Symphony Orchestra are in transition. Valery Gergiev left for a post in Munich, and the orchestra awaits the arrival of its next chosen leader, Sir Simon Rattle, in 2017. Their current North American tour (which stopped at Prudential Hall in Newark on Saturday night) is lead by associate principal conductor Gianandrea Noseda, an Italian maestro who has worked operatic miracles in the pit at the Metropolitan Opera in recent years, and will soon be known to American audiences as the newly minted leader of the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington D.C.

Concert Review: Famous Last Words

The Danish String Quartet at Zankel Hall.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Layabouts: the Danish String Quartet defy gravity. Photo © ECM Records.

The last utterance by a major composer is not always profound. But in the case of Dmitri Shostakovich and Franz Schubert, their final works are pinnacles of the chamber music repertory. Both of these valedictory compositions were programmed for Wednesday night's concert by the Danish String Quartet, who brought their clean-limbed, slightly astringent approach to chamber music to Carnegie Hall's subterranean Zankel Hall.

Concert Review: It's A Show About Nothing

Sibelius, Shostakovich and Salonen at the Philharmonic.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Leonidas Kavakos (left) in a battle of wills with Alan Gilbert (right)
as the New York Philharmonic plays on behind them.
Photo by Chris Lee © 2016 The New York Philharmonic.

Alan Gilbert is back at the helm of the New York Philharmonic this week. This concert program was something of a watershed for the orchestra's music director, who has grappled with "lame duck" status since it was announced (one year ago) that he would step down at the end of next season. This week's concert program juxtaposed a post-Romantic favorite alongside a Russian rarity and Karawane, a new work by current Philharmonic composer-in-residence Esa-Pekka Salonen.

Concert Review: Of Strings and Broken Puppets

Andris Nelsons and the Boston Symphony Orchestra at Carnegie Hall.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Conductor Andris Nelsons led the BSO at Carnegie Hall.
Photo courtesy the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

Andris Nelsons and the Boston Symphony Orchestra continued their three-night stand at Carnegie Hall Thursday night with a program featuring Beethoven's Violin Concerto bookended by watershed works from the pen of Dmitri Shostakovich. Mr. Nelsons' stamp on this orchestra is beginning to make itself heard: a painstaking attention to orchestral detail and an almost intimate podium style that makes himself and his baton part of the working ensemble and not merely its music director.

Concert Review: From Exile to Silence

The Mariinsky Orchestra returns to Carnegie Hall.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Valery Gergiev. Photo by Alexander Shapunov for the Mariinsky Theater.

The Mariinsky Orchestra, currently on tour in North America, returned to New York on Tuesday night. So did the protesters, lining the sidewalk in front of Carnegie Hall. About a dozen in number, they held up placards in English and Cyrillic. They shouted at concert-goers, handed out fliers and chanted slogans. Their issue: the close connection between Mariinsky artistic director Valery Gergiev and Vladimir Putin, the Russian political leader whose 2014 invasion of the Ukraine and anti-homosexual agenda were the twin subjects of the protest.

Concert Review: The Crowd Pleasers

Maxim Vengerov at the New York Philharmonic.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Maxim Vengerov. Photo by Sheila Rock for Warner Brothers Classics.

A debut and a return were the story at the New York Philharmonic this week. Making his debut before a subscription audience was Long Yu, the Chinese maestro who leads three orchestras in that country. The return was that of violinist Maxim Vengerov, who had not played with the Philharmonic in nine years. His solo spotlight: the evergreen Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto, an audience favorite that puts much of the burden squarely on the soloist's shoulders.

Concert Review: That '70s Show

The Emerson String Quartet plays Britten and Shostakovich.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

The new boy: the Emerson String Quartet (Eugene Drucker, Lawrence Dutton,
Philip Setzer) welcome cellist Paul Watkins.
Photo courtesy the Emerson String Quartet.

The average classical music lover is wary of anything written in the last century. However, Wednesday night's concert at Alice Tully Hall by the Emerson String Quartet featured three late works by two composers who survived into this unlikely decade: Dmitri Shostakovich and Benjamin Britten. The program explored the connection between the two composers, who were on friendly terms, with Shostakovich even visiting Britten's home base of Aldeburgh while on a rare visit to England.

Concert Review: In the Brisk Mid-Winter

Alan Gilbert conducts the New York Philharmonic.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Lisa Batiashvili nd friend. Photo by Anja Meara © 2013 Deutsche Grammophon.

There are two ways for a modern symphony orchestra to play Beethoven. An orchestra can make his music the main focus, usually featuring at least one of the symphonies and maybe a concerto. The other: juxtaposing Beethoven with other composers, putting his work in context. This week's Philharmonic program (heard Friday night under the baton of music director Alan Gilbert) took the latter approach, alternating Beethoven compositions with works by Shostakovich and Gershwin.

Concert Review: The Start of Something Big

The London Symphony Orchestra returns to Lincoln Center.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Bernard Haitink returned to Lincoln Center with the London Symphony Orchestra.
Photo by Todd Rosenberg, courtesy Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts.

The meteoric rise of Dmitri Shostakovich as one of Soviet Russia's most brilliant composers came to a screeching halt in 1936, when the dictator Josef Stalin attended one of his operas, Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District. The fall-out from Stalin's displeasure (which included an infamous Pravda editorial) led Shostakovich to quietly withdraw his Fourth Symphony from rehearsals. Locked away in a desk drawer, the work would not be heard until 1961.

On Sunday afternoon at Avery Fisher Hall, Bernard Haitink and the London Symphony Orchestra made a good case for the long, difficult Fourth as one of the composer's finest compositional achievements--and its composer's first important statement as a symphonist. (The First is a student piece, while the Second and Third are examples of Party propaganda.) It was fitting that this work was paired with Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 9--that composer's first mature statement in a genre that he would come to master. This concert was the first of this year's Great Performers at Lincoln Center, an annual series of orchestral concerts and chamber works.

Concert Review: Massacre at Lincoln Center

The New York Philharmonic plays Rachmaninoff and Shostakovich.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

The Bloody Sunday Massacre by Ivan Vladimirov.

The month of October in New York has been a bit of a mini-celebration of the works of Dmitri Shostakovich. No fewer than five of the composer's 15 symphonies are appearing on concert programs this month, and his early opera The Nose continues to run at the Metropolitan Opera. This week, the New York Philharmonic contributed to this accidental festival, performing the composer's Eleventh Symphony under the baton of Semyon Bychkov.

Opera Review: It's Off...and Running

The Metropolitan Opera re-tweaks The Nose.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

The Doctor (Gennady Bezzubenkov) administers to the nose-less Kovalyov in a scene from The Nose.
Photo by Ken Howard © 2013 The Metropolitan Opera.

This year's Metropolitan Opera season is full of unlikely gems, revivals of opera productions that combine the best aspects of the unique and unexpected. One of those is the current revival of The Nose, the first opera from the pen of Dmitri Shostakovich. This revival marked the return of the innovative, kinetic staging by William Kentridge, whose imaginative use of multi-media and the Met's enormous stage allowed this thoroughly Russian farce to play out with the force of a titanic sneeze.

Concert Review: No Turkeys At All

Andrey Boreyko conducts the New York Philharmonic.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Thanksgiving guest: conductor Andrey Boreyko.
Photo by Susanne Diesner © 2012 Tonhalle Orchester Zurich.

The New York Philharmonic adjusted their concert schedule for Thanksgiving week, allowing the players to enjoy time with their families (and not having to rehearse a new piece for the weekend concerts. As a result, last night's concert was a rarity: a new program premiered on a Tuesday. (The program will repeat Nov. 23, 24 and 27, with a Saturday matinee also featuring the New World Symphony.)

The concert, conducted by Andrey Boreyko opened with a rarity from Mendelssohn's vast (and underplayed) catalogue. Specifically, this was the charming, witty Overture to Die Heimkehr aus der Fremde ("Son and Stranger") one of the light operas Mendelssohn wrote to be played by his friends and family.

Mr. Boreyko's interpretation ull of the melodic life and joy one associates with this composer. A slow introduction was followed by a brisk middle section, with the introduction coming back as a brief, quizzical reprise at the very end.

The orchestra was then joined by Frank Peter Zimmermann for a performance of Shostakovich's First Violin Concerto. From the keening, mournful melodic line of the slow first movement, which bends and unwinds itself at a leisurely pace, this was playing of the highest level from last year's Artist-in-Residence.

A Serious Work of Socialist Realism.

Music by Dmitri Shostakovich. Enjoy.