Word: shostakovich
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Occasionally, the major festivals display some enterprise. The Hollywood Bowl last week was the site of an unusual program of Polish music, including works by Stanislaw Moniuszko (the 19th century composer of the popular Polish national opera Halka) and Shostakovich, who was of Polish descent. That program, however, was performed by the visiting Warsaw Philharmonic. At Tanglewood, the Boston Symphony has responsibly programmed two new works it commissioned for its centennial last year. And at the Mann Music Center in Philadelphia, the Philadelphia Orchestra performed a piano concerto believed to have been written by Franz Liszt, and orchestrated by Tchaikovsky...
Although the 15 symphonies are his best-known works, it is likely that a truer portrait of the composer is to be found in the quartets. After Shostakovich's daring opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk was denounced in the pages of Pravda as "muddle instead of music," he apologized with the Fifth Symphony (1937), a "creative reply to just criticism." Censured by a Communist Party resolution of 1948 for "formalistic distortions and antidemocratic tendencies," Shostakovich wrote two of his next three symphonies about the Russian Revolution. But these works were for official consumption; spiritually, Shostakovich went underground to express...
...decline of the serialist school, which had rigidly dominated composition since the end of World War II, has opened the way once again for a more humanistic, accessible form of musical expression. Shostakovich's pensive, sardonic, sometimes anguished style no longer has to be considered a liability. In fact, as reflected in the Fitzwilliam's excellent, probing performances-which concluded last week in Alice Tully Hall-his directness is one of his great strengths. For the conventional view of Shostakovich as merely a bombastic reactionary is wrong: he had something to say, and he said...
...idea that Shostakovich was merely noisy is one of the misconceptions we're trying to destroy," says Fitzwilliam Violist Alan George, 32. The ensemble has been closely associated with Shostakovich's music since 1972, when the sick, aging composer came to York to hear the group perform his tightly organized, mournful Quartet No. 13. That meeting began a relationship that continued until the composer's death; Shostakovich sent the Fitzwilliam the scores of his 14th and 15th Quartets for their first performances outside the Soviet Union. Says First Violinist Christopher Rowland, 35: "He seemed very touched that...
...group's adventurous repertory also includes quartets by César Franck, Fauré, Sibelius, Borodin and Nielsen. Starting in July they will regularly perform the music of Mozart and Haydn on 18th century instruments. But it is in Shostakovich that the Fitzwilliam's reputation has justly been made. Whether negotiating the complexities of the late quartets, such as the tortured, defiant Twelfth, or inhabiting the sunnier climes of the Fourth and Sixth Quartets, the Fitzwilliam's performances were marked by a clear, unforced ensemble tone, individual virtuosity and an unfailing sensitivity to the music...