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Dark and Darker

New York
Avery Fisher Hall
05/20/1999 -  
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Piano Concerto # 20
Dmitri Shostakovich: Symphony # 11, The Year 1905

Mitsuko Uchida (piano)
New York Philharmonic
Yakov Kreizberg (conductor)

I firmly believe that the reason for the immense popularity of Mozart in our time and the relative unimportance of the corresponding music of Haydn (the reverse of eighteenth century sensibilities) is that Mozart generously endowed his art with large quantities of angst, much more relevant to the twentieth century than the deist optimism of his Viennese mentor. The most powerful music of the boy genius always contains the elements, if not the reality, of sorrow and dissatisfaction. Even in the comic operas there are many examples of the deepest melancholy ("Oh, darkest night" from The Magic Flute), fear (expressed most deliciously in Soave sia il vento from Cosi fan Tutte), and confusion (Non so piu cosa son from Figaro). And there are some works which are pure in their despair, such as the Adagio and Fugue in C Minor and the first movement of the amazing Concerto # 20. So it was with considerable trepidation that I anticipated last evening's concert, combining as it did one of the most remarkable intellectual pianists of our era with an orchestra which lately has played abominably. All of my angst was instantly dispelled however by the gorgeous combination of sonorities which filled the hall in Ms. Uchida's surprisingly gentle performance of the despairing opening section. She projects a mastery of the music that goes far beyond any mere considerations of technique (which is flawless) and her performances are always brilliantly thought through. What was surprising was the restrained sound of the Philharmonic and the respectful attitude that they exhibited for their young conductor Yakov Kreizberg, Generalmusikdirector of the Komische Oper Berlin.

Uchida is one of those rare performers whose bearing naturally makes the audience concentrate almost exclusively on her (in another medium Julia Roberts currently possesses this quality) and so when she aborted her beginning of the second movement because of ambient crowd noise the resulting solo passage when it came was all the more impressive and profound. The shape of the movement as a whole was deeply moving, as was the deliberate tempo. Listening to this cerebral interpreter leaves one with the impression that all those "pretty" interpretations of Mozart concerti are lacking in the essential fiber of the musical material and are therefore devoid of ideas and genuinely specious. The quality that she shares with Maurizio Pollini is that of scholarly authenticity and their shared approach is almost that of a pilgrim at a holy shrine. We are blessed as intruders into their concentration to share even a glimmer of their insights.

No stranger to anxiety, Dmitri Shostakovich had to tread carefully all of his life to avoid political exile (and even death) because of his extreme humanitarian feeling, which he could not in all honesty suppress from his music. Sometimes he adopted the uniquely Russian ironic device loosely translated as "middle finger in the pocket" to hide his disgust for his totalitarian bosses and produced in the process works of high (if macabre) comedy, for example the Concerto for Piano, Trumpet and Strings. At other times he was too overwhelmed by the seemingly bottomless storehouse of man's brutality toward man to be anything but devastatingly serious. In order to avoid official censure, he cleverly couched his most anti-Soviet works in patriotic dress. Such a work is the Symphony #11. Subtitled "The Year 1905" it ostensibly tells the tale of the unsuccessful October Revolution that was the first true salvo of the Communist experience. The program (and the inclusion of many popular battle songs and Communist anthems) appears to be in total sympathy with the incipient Bolshevik rebels who were brutally murdered by the Palace Guard on that fateful 9th of January (there is even included a song that Lenin reportedly sang when he first heard of the massacre). It appeared to the Commisars that Shostakovich had finally come into the fold. However, the year was 1956 and the real source of inspiration was the crushing of the Hungarian rebellion under the metaphorical jackboots of the Soviets.

In many ways this remarkable essay is Shostakovich's own Boris Gudonoff. The opening faintly Oriental sounding chords depicting the wintry silence of the Palace Square is straight out of Moussorgsky and its ultimate reprise and transmogrification after so much bloodshed strikes at the heart of the Russian national operatic masterpiece. The hour-long symphony is a study in emotional contrasts and a very draining experience for both listener and musician. As a long suffering Philharmonic audience member I was delighted to see that this was one of their good nights as Kreizberg wrung every last bit of feeling out of the Eternal Memory movement and kept the attacks fierce and tight in the several brutal, percussive military scenes. Not that there weren't problems (they really have to do something about that sloppy trumpet section) but overall this was a powerful performance very well received by the New York crowd. The last movement, Tocsin in Russian and referring to the Revolutionary magazine of the same name, itself a reference to the alarm bells that haunt the consciousness of all but the most rural citizens of this troubled land, is the closest in spirit to Boris, complete with the menacing bell that suggests the mighty trezvon in the opera's Coronation Scene. Like Webern in his fourth of the Six Pieces for Large Orchestra, Shostakovich employs this unyielding bell as a symbol of fear and after the patriotic songs are forgotten, it is the metallic harshness of violence that remains. This is Shostakovich at his most affecting and it was presented last night in powerful fashion. If only there were any consistency whatsoever, the New York Philharmonic might actually turn into a first rate ensemble after all.



Frederick L. Kirshnit

 

 

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