Hartford Symphony, Hartford, CT
May 4-6, 2018
by Michael J. Moran
For the eighth “Masterworks series” program of the HSO’s
74th season, Music Director Carolyn Kuan presented an all-Shostakovich concert.
That might have sounded like a forbidding prospect to listeners who only know
Shostakovich as, in the words of the program notes, “the man who composed some
of the 20th century’s most profound musical statements.”
But leave it to Kuan’s canny instinct to lead off with a
perfect example of his extensive lighter side: “Tahiti Trot,” a renamed 1928
arrangement of “Tea for Two,” from the Broadway musical “No, No, Nanette,” by
Vincent Youmans, then popular in liberal pre-Stalinist Russia. This music was
second nature to Shostakovich, who wrote many film scores, where he often
dabbled in jazz. On a dare from conductor Nikolai Malko to orchestrate the
piece within an hour, Shostakovich produced his glittering and often hilarious
instrumentation in 45 minutes. The HSO and Kuan made quick and delightful work
of it.
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| Jay Campbell |
The first half continued with a vigorous and deeply felt
account of Shostakovich’s first cello concerto, written in the re-liberalizing
post-Stalinist Russia of 1959 for the legendary Mstislav Rostropovich and here
featuring in his HSO debut rising 28-year-old American cellist Jay Campbell.
His small boyish frame belied the power and virtuosity of his playing, which
ranged from skittering in the opening “Allegretto” to dark and intense in the
haunting “Moderato,” daring and athletic in the demanding “Cadenza,” and
exultant in the playful finale. Kuan and the ensemble gave him nimble and
transparent backing.
The concert concluded after intermission with a brilliant
performance of the fifth and most familiar of Shostakovich’s fifteen
symphonies, written in 1937 as “a Soviet composer’s reply to just criticism”
after “Pravda” condemned his opera “Lady Macbeth of Mtzensk” the year before as
“muddle instead of music.” The symphony’s solemn and brooding first movement,
cheekily sardonic “Allegretto,” luminous “Largo,” and ironically joyful finale
stirringly evoke the triumph of the human spirit over adversity.
The contrast among these three works gave the Hartford
audience a rare opportunity to appreciate the full range of Shostakovich’s
fraught but fruitful life and varied musical career.
