Tag Archives: schnittke

Arts & Entertainment, Music

Seattle Symphony’s Shostakovich and Schnittke is a Don’t-Miss Concert

This week’s Masterworks program at the Seattle Symphony promised to be an exciting one and it delivered in spades Thursday night, an all-Russian concert with Russian composers, a Russian conductor, Andrey Boreyko, and a Russian soloist, concertmaster Alexander Velinzon. (There are several Russian instrumentalists in the orchestra also.) The final concert is Saturday evening.

Shostakovich’s great “Leningrad” symphony, his No. 7, came after intermission; first came the extraordinary Violin Concerto No. 4 by Alfred Schnittke.

Schnittke’s music has somewhat a reputation of being hard to listen to and take in, but this is not so, particularly in this concerto. The music is described as polystylistic, which only means that the composer drew on all sorts of musical styles, from rock, jazz, minimalist and more as well as classical, for his work. But so did popular Gershwin—jazz and classical together.

Like Gershwin, Schnittke brings them into a coherent whole in this concerto, sometimes tonal and upbeat, sometimes dissonant, sometimes both simultaneously with the soloist in one mode, the orchestra in another. While the orchestra is massive for this, the music is not, often even spare. Velinzon’s violin sang throughout: mellifluous, lyrical in many areas, soaring or contemplative in others, fast, wild or arpeggiated in still more, peaceful or powerful, but always with a firm, rich tone, never scratchy, which fit the music like a glove. Schnittke includes some unexpected instrumentation, like a prepared piano which often had a raspy, honky-tonk timbre, and duets for the soloist with other instruments. Twice, Schnittke has the orchestra rise to great sound and fury and has the violin solo continue in the air, not on the strings, as it couldn’t have been heard anyway over the orchestra. Boreyko gave masterly leadership to the orchestra which responded to his every nuanced gesture shaping the music.

Shostakovich’s symphony was a beacon of hope to Russia when it was first performed in March 1942. He composed it near the beginning of the long and terrible siege of Leningrad, which caused massive hardship and death both in the city and among the siege troops. Shostakovich was one of those ordered to evacuate the city, his home, not long after the final encirclement of the city and the siege began (though the city had been under fire for some months before that). By then he had composed the first three movements, and he completed the fourth shortly after. The symphony had its premiere in Kuibyshev, a safe area many miles east of Moscow.

It’s not a battle symphony. Rather, it is a paean to the steadfast people of Leningrad, who never gave in to the German armies; people Shostakovich knew well, living in a situation for which he was present in the early stages. What came through Thursday night under Boreyko was a sense of determination, of courage threaded through the 68-minute work. It’s not sad, not terrible, but immensely colorful.

Halfway through a serene and unhurried first movement the rhythm of marching feet begins softly and grows inexorably, tension building gradually to threatening, with clashes and the feel of scurrying, cacophony below, loud dominating march above. One gets a sense of efforts at normal life in the second and third, and in the last, it’s positive, energetic, elegiac as well, but with this sense of determination dominant.

Boreyko, who stands rock solid on the podium, sometimes conducted with minimal gestures at others described exactly what he wanted with poesy and clarity in his arm movements. He brought out all the nuances and made vivid Shostakovich’s intent. There were many fine orchestra solos, including all the wind principals and the cello. The whole was moving, even breathtaking in its sweep, color and emotional intensity. One could have heard a pin drop in the audience.

Arts & Entertainment, Music

Hamelin Treats Seattle to a Cheery Shostakovich and Dolorous Schnittke

Marc-André Hamelin

It’s rare to have an entire concert of 20th-century Russian chamber music, and thanks go to the Seattle Symphony musicians and pianist Marc-André Hamelin, who put together the program of Shostakovich and Schnittke works performed last Friday night at Nordstrom Recital Hall.

Shostakovich’s Piano Quintet, Op. 57, may be in a minor key, but it’s one of the most cheerful chamber works the composer wrote. The ominous undercurrents which are rarely distant from his other works are absent here, and it can be enjoyed for just what it is, a well-designed, substantive work, full of melody.

Violinists Elisa Barston and guest violinist Natasha Bazhanov, violist Mara Gearman, and cellist Walter Gray, with Hamelin, caught the detail and the feelings which are widely different in succeeding movements: the first almost fantasia-like; the second with a haunting opening phrase (reminiscent of “Nahandove,” one of Ravel’s Chansons Madecasse); the third, a Scherzo, almost circus music, jaunty but with a hint of the macabre; and the fourth bright and peaceful though with what might be heard as a tolling bell.

Each of the strings players had moments of gorgeous tone, unpushed and warm, quiet and tender, while Hamelin, who could hardly have had more than one rehearsal, played as though he’d been with them for years.

Alfred Schnittke

Alfred Schnittke’s Piano Quintet, completed about 35 years after the previous quintet, is a very different work. This is full of sadness, as Schnittke mourned the death of his mother and then the death of Shostakovich. It’s not an easy work to assimilate, the atonal music having little by way of melody or comfortable harmonies. Violinist Mikhail Shmidt had worked with the composer in Moscow and described him as a modest, shy man who thought others’ music better than his own.

The piano role is spare. Every note counts, rather like the musical equivalent of a drawing by artist Paul Klee, and several times Schnittke includes an insistent repeated note which continues for some time.

Most notably in the first movement, this is at the top of the piano and struck so that it is more percussion than tone for most of its repetition, only towards the end becoming more gentle and singing. The strings meanwhile play in dissonant harmony in long notes which sound something like a hive of bees, and in the second movement a slightly bizarre waltz creeps in. Only by listening carefully does one discern the subtleties Schnittke has embedded in the music throughout.

And by watching. At the end of the first movement as the music became quieter and quieter, with only the piano remaining, Hamelin’s hands came off the keys and one could see his fingers moving above them in total silence. An unfortunate burst of clapping marred that hushed, unusual ending, from a part of the hall where the hands could not be seen. Shmidt and Hamelin were joined by violinist Artur Girsky, violist Sayaka Kokubo, and cellist Meeka Quan DiLorenzo in a performance given enthhusastic applause at the end.

First and shortest of the evening was another work impelled by grief. At eighteen, Shostakovich wrote this Prelude and later a companion Scherzo, for string octet, after the death of a friend. They are astonishing works for a teenager, harmonically sophisticated, intense, frenzied, eerie and grim, each part resolving only towards the end, expressing the anger towards death of a young man. The eight string players together gave it a strong performance.