Carnegie Hall: Boston Symphony Performs Beethoven and Shostakovich

On Thursday evening, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, under the baton of its new music director Andris Nelsons, performed an unusually long program that featured works by two very different composers - Beethoven and Shostakovich - and included an appearance by the celebrated violinist Christian Tetzlaff.

The evening began with Shostakovich's Passacaglia from Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, Op. 29 (1934).  I had attended a production of the full opera at the Met in November and had been duly impressed by the composer's achievement.  Before then, I had known Shostakovich primarily through his chamber works and symphonies.  But that he also had a flair for the dramatic could easily be seen from his skillful adaptation of the Leskov novel.  What was most revealing in it was the sympathy Shostakovich displayed toward his heroine Katerina, an attitude entirely absent from his nineteenth century source.  It's ironic that the composer came close to being executed by Stalin for his composition of a work in which he expressed such sympathy for the downtrodden proletariat.  If the Soviet authorities were able to see in Katerina's character only degeneracy, Shostakovich at least showed an awareness of the conditions that had driven her to such extremes.  One of the unusual features of the opera was the use of orchestral interludes interspersed among scenes of action and dialog as a means of connecting the scenes to one another and providing continuity.  Of these passages, the Passacaglia was the longest and most dramatic; it came at the crucial moment when Katerina had moved to a new level of iniquity through the brutal murder of her father-in-law Boris.  Though Shostakovich had cast the music in the form of a Passacaglia, its jarring almost melodramatic sound was as far from the familiar Baroque form as one could imagine.  As such, it formed a counterpart to the blaring dissonant music that accompanied Katerina's and Sergei's violent lovemaking at the conclusion of the preceding act.

The next work was one of the most famous ever written for violin, Beethoven's Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 61 (1806).  Although it's difficult to believe now, so popular has the work become, it was a signal failure at its premiere and remained relatively unknown until revived by Mendelssohn (with Joachim as soloist) in 1844.  The initial lack of success may have been due to Beethoven's tardiness in completing the score.  It's said that the work's dedicatee, Franz Clement, received his copy so late that he was forced to sight read his part at the premiere.  Fortunately, the soloist at this performance was much better prepared.  I first heard Christian Tetzlaff several seasons ago when he performed the Ligeti Violin Concerto with the ACJW Ensemble under the baton of Simon Rattle.  Last season, I heard him again, this time with Orpheus, in a performance of the Joachim Violin Concerto.  Although Tetzlaff has been criticized at times for a lack of feeling in his playing, I found him on both the above occasions to be intelligent and sympathetic to the composers' intentions.  Personally, I do not care for a great deal of flamboyance or show of emotion when listening to music.  I much prefer to hear an artist who can present to the audience in coherent fashion the ideas a given composer is seeking to express.  I thought Tetzlaff succeeded brilliantly in doing so in this piece.  He was in full control throughout the length of the work and at its conclusion brought the audience to its feet for a standing ovation.  The cadenza he played in the first movement was his own adaptation of that which Beethoven had written for the alternate version for piano and orchestra, the Op. 61a.

After intermission, the program concluded with another piece by Shostakovich, the Symphony No. 10 in E minor, Op. 93 (1953).  As the symphony's premiere took place only nine months after the death of Stalin, many commentators have given in to the temptation to see in it, particularly in the pounding second movement, a portrait of the dictator or at least references to the composer's feelings toward him.  Shostakovich's supposed memoir Testimony, a posthumous work whose authenticity has been vehemently challenged, in fact contains the statement:

"I did depict Stalin in my next symphony, the Tenth. I wrote it right after Stalin's death and no one has yet guessed what the symphony is about. It's about Stalin and the Stalin years. The second part, the scherzo, is a musical portrait of Stalin, roughly speaking. Of course, there are many other things in it, but that's the basis."

Somehow, this all seems a bit too neat, especially as there is some evidence that Shostakovich began work on the symphony at a much earlier date.  While no doubt the composer, along with countless other Soviet intellectuals, breathed a sigh of relief in seeing such an oppressive a regime finally come to an end, it is not necessary to look for so exact an analogy.  Though Shostakovich may very well have used the composition as an opportunity to reflect on the series of privations he had been forced to endure in the course of his career - the musical signature DSCH, so often repeated in the third and fourth movements, can be interpreted as a testament to his resilience - in the end the work is an intensely personal piece whose full meaning could only be known to the composer himself.

Thursday evening was the first opportunity I'd had to hear the BSO in several years; I'd somehow forgotten how great an orchestra it is.  The ensemble gave a tight, controlled performance of three very complex pieces and succeeded beyond my expectations.  This was the first time I'd heard music director Andris Nelsons, and I thought very highly of his work - he knew exactly what sound he wanted and managed to elicit it from the orchestra without any undue effort.  I would strongly recommend attending a BSO performance if one has the chance.