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Chamber Orchestra's Shostakovich
Free at last:
The Chamber Orchestra's liberated Shostakovich
LEWIS WHITTINGTON
When the Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich’s creative energies were stifled by Stalin back in the darkest days of the Soviet Union, the great dissident novelist Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was one of the few voices to speak up for him. Solzhenitsyn’s pianist/maestro son Ignat took up on September 25th where his father left off, celebrating Shostakovich’s 100th birthday with selections from the composer’s muscular chamber pieces. As conducted by Solzhenitsyn and performed by the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia, artistic justice was served: The four works soared with bold statements and rich subtleties, bringing forth every emotional dimension and texture.
Suite No. 1 for Jazz Orchestra (1924) was a stylish ballroom set with waltz, polka and foxtrot movements in tandem. It displays Shostakovich’s influence in orchestrated jazz that’s as potent as Gershwin’s and even Ellington’s. First violin Gloria Justen sardonically fiddled all of the Weillean cabaret decadence roiling in the undertow.
Chamber Symphony in C. Minor, Op. 110 (1960, 1967), in five movements for the full chamber orchestra, was a fully realized chamber full of fireworks and embers. The Allegretto had the ensemble strings pulsing with tension and cathartic releases. Solzhenitsyn let the sonic waves gush mightily, without decoration.
Hamlet: Suite from the Theater Music (1932) demonstrates the composer’s illusory prowess even in incidental music.’ It’s no wonder Shostakovich also scored several films. <i>Hamlet’s 13 scenes of clipped fanfares and processionals are composed with equal crispness and nuance as the interior dramaturge of scenes such as “Ophelia‘s Song” and “Pantomime of the Actors.” Solzhenitsyn gets in and out of these musical cuts with quick, straightforward pacing; it’s appropriately a musical sketchbook rather than a musical equivalent of “To be or not to be.”
Virtuosic cellist Pieter Wispelwey dispatched the torpor of Cello Concerto No 1 in E flat (1959), flying into the first movement, which conveys the quality of a string instrument in deep distress lurching toward suicide or some coup de grace. After this high-strung entry, Wispelwey started to explore the delicate interiors of the work. By the end, he was engaged in a transcendent dialogue with this orchestra, which was never overwrought and otherwise completely liberated.
The Chamber Orchestra's liberated Shostakovich
LEWIS WHITTINGTON
When the Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich’s creative energies were stifled by Stalin back in the darkest days of the Soviet Union, the great dissident novelist Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was one of the few voices to speak up for him. Solzhenitsyn’s pianist/maestro son Ignat took up on September 25th where his father left off, celebrating Shostakovich’s 100th birthday with selections from the composer’s muscular chamber pieces. As conducted by Solzhenitsyn and performed by the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia, artistic justice was served: The four works soared with bold statements and rich subtleties, bringing forth every emotional dimension and texture.
Suite No. 1 for Jazz Orchestra (1924) was a stylish ballroom set with waltz, polka and foxtrot movements in tandem. It displays Shostakovich’s influence in orchestrated jazz that’s as potent as Gershwin’s and even Ellington’s. First violin Gloria Justen sardonically fiddled all of the Weillean cabaret decadence roiling in the undertow.
Chamber Symphony in C. Minor, Op. 110 (1960, 1967), in five movements for the full chamber orchestra, was a fully realized chamber full of fireworks and embers. The Allegretto had the ensemble strings pulsing with tension and cathartic releases. Solzhenitsyn let the sonic waves gush mightily, without decoration.
Hamlet: Suite from the Theater Music (1932) demonstrates the composer’s illusory prowess even in incidental music.’ It’s no wonder Shostakovich also scored several films. <i>Hamlet’s 13 scenes of clipped fanfares and processionals are composed with equal crispness and nuance as the interior dramaturge of scenes such as “Ophelia‘s Song” and “Pantomime of the Actors.” Solzhenitsyn gets in and out of these musical cuts with quick, straightforward pacing; it’s appropriately a musical sketchbook rather than a musical equivalent of “To be or not to be.”
Virtuosic cellist Pieter Wispelwey dispatched the torpor of Cello Concerto No 1 in E flat (1959), flying into the first movement, which conveys the quality of a string instrument in deep distress lurching toward suicide or some coup de grace. After this high-strung entry, Wispelwey started to explore the delicate interiors of the work. By the end, he was engaged in a transcendent dialogue with this orchestra, which was never overwrought and otherwise completely liberated.
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