Overture Magazine 2019-20 BSO_Overture_Jan Feb | Page 20

MENDELSSOHN VIOLIN CONCERTO
Gil Shaham
Gil Shaham is one of
the foremost violinists
of our time: his flawless
technique combined
with his inimitable
warmth and generosity of spirit has
solidified his renown as an American
master. The Grammy Award-winner
is sought after throughout the world
for concerto appearances with leading
orchestras and conductors and regularly
appears with ensembles on the world’s
great concert stages and at the most
prestigious festivals.
Highlights of recent years include the
acclaimed recording and performances of
J.S. Bach’s complete sonatas and partitas
for solo violin. In the coming seasons, he
will join his long-time duo partner pianist,
Akira Eguchi in recitals throughout North
America, Europe and Asia.
Regular orchestra appearances
include the Berlin Philharmonic, Boston
Symphony Orchestra, Chicago Symphony
Orchestra, Israel Philharmonic, Los
Angeles Philharmonic and New York
Philharmonic, as well as multi-year
residencies with the Montreal, Stuttgart
Radio and Singapore symphony orchestras.
Shaham has more than two dozen
concerto and solo CDs to his name,
earning multiple Grammys, a Grand
Prix du Disque, Diapason d’Or
and Gramophone Editor’s Choice. Many
of these recordings appear on Canary
Classics, the label he founded in 2004.
His CDs include 1930s Violin Concertos,
Virtuoso Violin Works, Elgar’s Violin
Concerto, Hebrew Melodies and The
Butterfly Lovers. His most recent recording
in the series, 1930s Violin Concertos Vol. 2,
was nominated for a Grammy Award.
Shaham was awarded an Avery Fisher
Career Grant in 1990, and in 2008,
received the coveted Avery Fisher Prize.
He plays the 1699 “Countess Polignac”
Stradivarius and lives in New York City
with his wife, violinist Adele Anthony,
and their three children.
Gil Shaham last appeared with the BSO in
June 2017, performing Beethoven’s Violin
Concerto, Marin Alsop, conductor.
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OV E R T U R E / BSOmusic.org
About the Concert
SYMPHONY NO. 9 IN E-FLAT MAJOR
Dmitri Shostakovich
Born in St. Petersburg, Russia, September 25,
1906; died in Moscow, Russia, August 9, 1975
When the U.S.S.R.’s political and musical
elite gathered in the great concert hall
of the Leningrad Philharmonic on
November 3, 1945 for the world premiere
of Shostakovich’s Ninth Symphony, they
had every expectation of hearing an epic,
transcendent work. In the words of Soviet
musicologist Dmitri Rabinovich, “We were
prepared to listen to a new monumental
musical fresco, something that we had
the right to expect…particularly at a time
when the Soviet people and the whole
world were still full of the recent victory
over Fascism. But we heard something
quite different, something that at first
astounded us by its unexpectedness.”
Instead of an ode to victory and a
threnody to the millions who had died
in World War II, they heard a flippant
little work for modest orchestra without
chorus or soloists—the lightest, wittiest
and second-shortest of Shostakovich’s 15
symphonies. Stalin especially took the
work as a personal affront. For him, the
victory over the Fascists was the greatest
triumph of his career, and he had expected
a suitable musical tribute along with a
heartfelt dedication. Others were appalled
that Shostakovich should cap his trilogy of
“war symphonies”—including the heroic
Seventh dedicated to Leningrad’s brave
resistance during the German siege; and
the powerful Eighth, a harrowing musical
depiction of the suffering war inflicts—
with such an inconsequential finale.
It seems Shostakovich originally tried
to write an epic Ninth. After two abortive
attempts, he found he could not honestly
create a hymn of triumph, given that he
believed life under Stalin would be just as
bleak after the war as it had been before.
In Testimony, the controversial memoir
he allegedly dictated to Solomon Volkov,
he said: “Everyone praised Stalin, and
now I was supposed to join in this unholy
affair.…I couldn’t write an apotheosis for
Stalin, I simply couldn’t.”
Not sharing the expectations of the
Ninth’s first listeners, audiences today
love this work for its bright spirit and
infectious tunes and because it does not
assault them with strident dissonances
and painful emotions as do so many
Shostakovich works. But our appreciation
of this symphony is enhanced by knowing
that more complex currents flow under
its smooth surface: the black humor
and satirical worldview that has saved
generations of Russians from despair under
repressive regimes.
The sonata-form first movement
begins with a buoyant little theme in
the style of Haydn, but with the sassy,
mocking spirit of Prokofiev’s “Classical”
Symphony. The orchestra’s brightest
colors—brass, high woodwinds and
drum rat-a-tats—paint the world of
the circus, especially when a raucous
trombone and om-pa drums usher on
the piccolo squeaking the second theme.
Movement two is the Symphony’s
most serious. Two types of music
alternate: first sinuous, melancholy
lines for solo woodwinds, then a mock-
ominous chromatic creeping in the
strings. The mood is ambiguous—more
wistful than mournful.
The final three movements are deftly
linked together. First comes a scherzo,
a romping dance for clowns that finally
darkens and slows to lead into the
fourth-position Largo. A baleful brass
fanfare introduces the solo bassoon
singing a lament in long, unmetered
lines; a brief elegy to the wartime
dead. But the bassoon continues on
to launch the finale’s merry principal
theme. This gradually builds in volume
and energy to a festive full-orchestra
recapitulation. But there is something
mechanical and unreal here — a
dance for zombies. As Shostakovich
sarcastically snapped to a friend
reacting in horror to the news of the
atom-bomb attack on Hiroshima:
“Our business is to rejoice!”
Instrumentation: Two flutes, piccolo, two
oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns,
two trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani,
percussion and strings.