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The Russians are running! The Russians are running! New York
Wu Tsai Theater, David Geffen Hall
02/20/2025 - & February 21, 22*, 2025
Dmitri Shostakovich: Suite from Moscow Cheryomushki, Opus 105 (arr. Andrew Cornall): “A Spin through Moscow”, “Waltz” & “Dances” – Symphony No. 15 in A Major, Opus 141
Sergei Prokofiev: Piano Concerto No. 2 in G Minor, Opus 16
Seong-Jin Cho (Pianist)
New York Philharmonic Orchestra, Santtu-Matias Rouvali (Conductor)
S.-J. Cho/S.-M. Rouvali (© Mariusz Kubik/Marco Borggreve)
“The 15th symphony is about loneliness and death, It is radically horrible and cruel.”
Conductor Kurt Sanderling
“The first movement is like a child’s toyshop under a cloudless sky. It was a work which simply grabbed me, one of the few which appeared in my mind with total clarity from first note to last.”
Dmitri Shostakovich
Every composer had protean moments. But they couldn’t come more protean than Dmitri Shostakovich in this week’s New York Philharmonic concert. Granted, the Russian never confined himself to the philosophical. He wrote jazz, operettas, he even orchestrated Youmans’ Tea for Two. But when he went wild, he gave new meaning to the word wild.
That young Finnish conductor Santtu-Matias Rouvali, started with three works from an operetta (about the housing shortages in Moscow!) by Shostakovich. And it was difficult to know which was more chaotic, the conductor’s hair or the composer’s mad three movements.
Forget the hirsute part. This was Shostakovich presenting music part circus, part sarcasm, part whirling Dervish and lots of other parts. The waltz jumped awkwardly from one key to another. The two outward movements were driven with superhuman force. And while each movement was short, Maestro Rouvali conducted with care. He seemed to cue in every instrument, every consort with a different movement. And those in the audience who thought they knew Shostakovich (usually from the Fifth Symphony finale) were here presented with an ear‑popping astonishment.
Aha! Now we come to the end of the evening. Shostakovich was dying, and one felt it in the desolate funereal final movement of his 15th Symphony. Few strings, but brass passages resembling a Sicilian street funeral. Though Shostakovich had dozens of secrets here.
The ending could have resembled some of Mahler’s pre‑death movements. But Shostakovich honored many of his favorite writers: Wagner (both Ring and Tristan), a song by Glière, and quite a few quotes from previous music by his own favorite composer, Dmitri Shostakovich!
That finale is lachrymose to the nth degree. But the composer was quite the rascal. The opening was virtually a piccolo concerto, with Mindy Kaufman doing the honors. Oh, and the galop from William Tell and a few Mahler‑like crescendo climaxes.
In the composer’s words, a “toyshop.”
M. Christakos/M. Kaufman (© New York Philharmonic)
The second movement highlighted more First Chair players, mainly cellist Matthew Christakos playing sweetly and soulfully. But one mustn’t forget the five percussionists playing 20 different instruments in each movement, ending with a soft marimba solo from the opening of the 15th.
“Enigmatic” is an understatement, and no conductor can take allowances with such complex, almost tactile feelings. Mr. Rouvali did his best, though the cohesions of the slow sections were difficult to comprehend. Yet at the end, he made us believe in a bleakness without pathos, a loneliness more spiritual than personal.
The centerpiece of this all-Russian program didn’t create measure of the playful or the bleak. Prokofiev’s Second Piano Concerto was all fingers. Fingers and macabre moments, quark‑like speeds and sudden songs.
And Korean virtuoso Seong-Jin Cho, best known for his Ravel marathons, understood instinctively what was demanded of him. His fingers didn’t play, they dazzled, He didn’t think about “inner thoughts”, he danced over the keys like Astaire and Baryshnikov in an electric–and electrifying pas de deux.
One could only listen with astonishment. As for the first movement cadenza, Mr. Cho played beyond mere mortal belief!
Harry Rolnick
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