A Russo Brazilian Delight

Saturdays are for me a time of great expectations. I always look forward to encountering new conductors, new musicians, new composers or works from old composers whose works I still haven't heard. Last Saturday was good in that regard. I met a new conductor, a new cellist and a work from Shostakovich new to me. The conductor was Dmitri Jurowski, the cellish Sol Gabetta and the new work was Shostakovich's  Symphony No. 15.

When the concert opened, I saw a petite blonde in a bare shoulder emerald green dress with a huge cello in front of her walking quickly but confidently on to the stage followed shortly by a bulky gentlemen with long black curly hair in a swallow tail. The music started. It was Dvorak's Cello Concerto in B minor Op 104., written by him in 1894 and completed in early 1895 shortly before he left for America and first performed in London in 1896 in Allegro, Adagio ma non troppo and Finale (Allegro moderato). I have heard it many times but it was the first time that I heard it performed so delicately. Only a woman would have it played it that way. Her sound was so fine and in places so silkily, especially in the soft passages that it sounded as if I were hearing the concerto for the first time. I learned later that the young Brazilian lady was playing a G. B Guardagnini from 1759! In June, 2008, she debuted with Washington's National Symphony Orchestra as a duo partner of Yo Yo Ma in the world première of Leonard Slatkin's Dialogue for Two Cellos. She had played in various orchestras in Frankfurt, Basel, France, Holland, Czchechoslovakia, UK, Russia, Belgium, America and Korea and had also recorded cello concertos of Elgar and Shostakovich. As encore, she played for us Peteris Vasks's Dolcissimo & Fortissimo in which we got an opportunity to hear her angelic voice in addition to her very sensitive and soulful playing. A  surprise discovery indeed! 

Juroswki was another musical genius admitted to play the cello at the Tchaikovsky's Convervatory at 6 until he left for Germany, when he started to learn conducting in Berlin's Hans Eisler Academy. He has since has played for the Radio Orchestras of Berlin, Belgium, Stockholm, France and Teatreo Felice in Genoa, Dresden Philharmonic, BBC Philharmonic, Hamburg Symphony and also the Residentie Orchestra of the Hague, Israel and the Munich State Opera and has absolute control over the HKPO. He played for us Shostakovich's  Symphony No. 15 and his last,  in Allegretto, Adagio, Allegretto and Adagio. In many ways, this is a rather unusual symphony. We hear in it joy, sorrow, fear, hope, excitement, exhilaration, melancholy, written when the composer was diagnosed as having poliomyelitis in 1969 . He said he wrote it in hospital, later at the dacha and that from the start, he was simply swept along by the materials, much of it biographical. It was first performed in 1972 in Moscow under the baton of his son Maxim Shostakovich. According to the Program Notes, the first movement was supposed to depict a scene at a toy shop, representing his childhood. No wonder it was so fun filled. There were frequent quotations in this symphony, some from his earlier works and some from the works of other composers e.g. the galloping theme from Rosssini's William Tell Overture. The second movement was rather more serious and was supposed to commemorate the thousands of soldiers who lost their lives during the wars. There were also quotations from his 11th and 14th symphonies, from  the fate motif of Wagner's Ring of the Nieberlung, a song by Glinka, Rachmaninoff's Symphonic Dances, a march from his own Symphony No. 4 and 7 etc. in the fourth movement. No matter what, it came to a glorious conclusion.

It was an evening of surprises. It was a delight to be so surprised. I'm truly glad I did not miss it. I can now listen more to this most unusual last work of one of the greatest Russian composers, Shostakovich with much more understanding.