Tag Archives: shostakovich

Arts & Entertainment, Music

Toradze Unleashes a Torrent of Prokofiev at Benaroya Hall

Gerard Schwarz

The Seattle Symphony’s laureate conductor, Gerard Schwarz, returns to the podium for this week’s concert pair at Benaroya Hall (April 28; tickets), including the world premiere of a suite from Daron Aric Hagen’s opera Amelia (Schwarz conducted the world premiere at Seattle Opera two years ago). Together with Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 3 with Alexander Toradze at the keyboard and Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 8, it makes for an unusually long concert, a two-and-a-half-hour performance.

Hagen’s Five Sky Interludes, thirty minutes of orchestral sections bridging or introducing scenes in Amelia, are full of themes which pervade the opera, but for those who don’t know the psychological baggage of that story, they didn’t convey much. The work is based on a bland lullaby, introduced in the first interlude. While there are flashes of interest in the second, it’s not until the third that anything exciting happens. This one, depicting the state of mind of Amelia, gets ever more feverish and cacophonous. While well organized and orchestrated, the whole work seems  a bit earnest, uninspired, though there are nice touches like the use of bells and a trumpet toward the end.

Unfortunate to pair this, then, with the brilliance of Prokofiev and the emotion in Shostakovich.

Alexander Toradze

The former’s third concerto requires extraordinary technique from the soloist, which Toradze has no trouble in providing. Much of it the work is played at lightning speed. Toradze, like an elderly elf with his frill of white hair around a shining pate, used his whole body in the act of performance. His hands, a blur on the keyboard, were accompanied by his body rising right off his seat, while his feet, both of them, kept the rhythm with stamps and taps, even when the toe was providing the necessary pedalwork.

A notable Prokofiev interpreter, his playing could as easily be a soft expressive caress on the keys as a formidable cascade of coruscating notes. Schwarz and the orchestra stayed closely with him throughout, always allowing the piano’s role to come through.

Schwarz has done well by Shostakovich in the past, but in recent years he has tended to veer towards demanding louder and louder sound from the orchestra more and more of the time. The performance of the Eighth suffered from far too much fortissimo, to four ‘f’s, negating much of the nuance which can be present. At the same time, he also at times elicited some beautiful soft playing from the musicians.

Shostakovich gives long solos to several instruments, including several we don’t often hear from at such length and in such prominence, such as Zartouhi Dombourian-Eby’s piccolo and Larey McDaniel’s bass clarinet. It’s always a pleasure to know we have such gifted and expressive players in the body of the orchestra. However, Schwarz had the piccolo at such volume that it was sometimes painful to the ears, even in Row Q, and particularly when combined with the cymbals.

Both these works brought enthusiastic applause from the audience, which had also given Schwarz long applause when he arrived on stage at the concert start. He will be back on the Benaroya podium May 15-17 for performances of Bartok’s dark opera Bluebeard’s Castle, with the unusual sets by Dale Chihuly.

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.

Arts & Entertainment, Music

Jerry’s Swan Songs, and a Shostakovich 10th That Goes Up to 11

Gerard Schwarz

With this post, The SunBreak welcomes classical music reviewer Philippa Kiraly, who comes to us from The Gathering Note where she covered classical music the last three years, and before that, from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

After 26 years at the musical helm of the Seattle Symphony, music director and conductor Gerard Schwarz steps down in a few weeks. His two concerts this month include the final works from the Gund-Simonyi Farewell Commissions, yet another commission by a group of donors, and Mahler’s Resurrection Symphony as his actual last directoral presence on the podium (on June 16; tickets).

Thursday night he shared his penultimate farewell concert, recognizing a couple of the musicians who are also leaving the orchestra: bass player Ronald Simon, with 50 years there under his belt, and principal flute Scott Goff, who graced the orchestra for 42 years in that position. The third, concertmaster Maria Larionoff, was sick and not present, but she will surely receive her plaudits at the next concert.

Friday’s concert was well attended, another plus for Schwarz who has been an excellent programmer over the years and inveigled many who thought they would prefer only old musical warhorses to come to concerts of new or unexpected music.

Two world premieres started it off. Paul Schoenfield’s “Freilach” is one of the Gund- Simonyi Farewell Commissions, and as he said in the notes, “Freilach” in Hebrew means “joyous and sometimes a frenetic style of music,” which he felt was a fitting return for “Jerry’s warmth, kindness and encouragement over the years.”

It was short, just under five minutes, but “Freilach” described it exactly. Modern in idiom, the music bubbled exuberantly, downright sassy in places, with a distinct Middle Eastern feel to the scale at times and often hummable melodies coming through. One could almost feel high kicks coming on, maybe today’s answer to the cancan. The big orchestra played with verve and light-hearted spirit.

Immediately following came another commission, by composer-in-residence Samuel Jones. After 14 years in that position, Jones is also retiring—to give, he says, the new conductor, Ludovic Morlot, the opportunity to make his own choices. We are fortunate to have had a composer the quality of Jones here for that space of time. His new work, which had the stipulation that it celebrate the special relationship between fathers and daughters, is somewhat of a hybrid, being part-tone poem, part-song cycle without words.

Titled “Reflections: Songs of Fathers and Daughters,” it’s more tonal that the Schoenfield, and also filled with hummable moments. It describes, though not implicitly, the life stages of a daughter from inception to falling in love as an adult, so there are many changing moods, sometimes a hint of tunes which just might have come from the Gershwin era, a pop waltz, school-type songs, a tad of Coplandesque harmony, some cacophony—when did raising a daughter not include some of that?, but all of it subtly incorporated in a satisfactory 20-minute work which held together and held the interest. An excellent performance garnered an ovation for Jones himself as well as the orchestra.

William Wolfram

William Wolfram and Liszt’s Piano Concerto No. 2 provided a change of pace to the 19th century. Pianist Wolfram is familiar to many Seattleites as a consummate chamber music player with Seattle Chamber Music Summer Festival, and he will be here the end of next month for that.

Friday’s was a stellar performance. So often, the number of notes in the piano role of a Liszt concerto seems to persuade performers that they should be glittering torrents of glissades, runs, arpeggios, and the like, more technical show off than musical interpretation.

Wolfram brought thought, care, and introspection to his playing. All the notes were there, clear and sweet, but he often seemed just to be caressing the piano keys, stroking the notes out with relaxed fingers, allowing the musical ideas to come through in shaped phrases and coherent progression. There was fire where it needed to be and the orchestra stayed closely with him not overwhelming his quieter tones, while acting principal cello Eric Gaenslen shared a long, singing duet with Wolfram. A lovely performance, a pleasure to hear.

I wish I could say the same of the Shostakovich Tenth Symphony which ended the program. It was a big work to end a performance which had required a lot of attention already, close to an hour in length and making an overlong concert. It’s a great piece, worth hearing when fresh, and the wind players particularly shone, including notable work from several principals: bassoon Seth Krimsky, horn John Cerminaro, clarinet Laura DeLuca, flute Scott Goff, and oboe Ben Hausmann.

However, Schwarz fell back into a habit he has gathered this past year, of trying to make every double forte a quadruple or even quintuple forte, forcing the musicians and making this listener (in Row N downstairs) feel like cringing back from the volume. This blare of sound detracts from the nuances of the harmonies which cannot be elicited from instruments when playing at that decibel level, and which anyway cannot be heard in detail in the din. Shostakovich was a master of orchestration and tonal detail, and it’s a shame for them not to be made clear.