SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL

Britten, Liszt, and Shostakovich: Gerard Schwarz, cond., Arnaldo Cohen, piano, Seattle Symphony, Benaroya Hall, Seattle, 17.11.2007 (BJ)

A year ago I had occasion to say some fairly negative things about a performance of Shostakovich’s Eleventh Symphony given by Valery Gergiev and his Kirov Orchestra. Gergiev is an undeniably charismatic conductor, but also in my opinion, so far as talent is concerned, a vastly overrated one, and his interpretation of the work paled in comparison with one that stands among the finest performances – of any work stored in my musical memory. When Gerard Schwarz conducted it, in the Seattle Symphony’s old home at the Opera House, it was the kind of occasion that made me suddenly realize, about forty minutes into the piece, that I had been forgetting to breathe, so enthralling, so utterly spellbinding, was the musical discourse.

Now, twelve years later, Schwarz tackled the work again, and the result was even finer. The two faster movements in this musical evocation of the terrible events of “The Year 1905” (Shostakovich’s subtitle for the symphony) had all the rhythmic vitality, textural richness, and sheer murderous heft of that earlier reading. It was in the third movement, a profoundly expressive Adagio titled “Eternal Memory” and based on a Russian revolutionary song, that this new realization attained its unprecedented intensity and power. Some years ago, in an interview for my book Conductors on Conducting, Carlo Maria Giulini told me that there are two kinds of pianissimo: a true pianissimo, and a pianissimo with a fortissimo contained within it – think of the opening of Beethoven’s Ninth. In this performance, the superb playing of the Adagio theme on muted violas surely constituted one of the most sustained examples of the latter genre. The atmosphere of bleak mourning, other orchestral elements gathering around the tune with equally well-maintained restraint, seemed to persist without hope of any change of mood, but when the fortissimos came – in the middle of this movement and at the raucous opening of the bloodcurdling finale – it was as if they had been there, implicit, all the time.

Aside from Ronald Johnson, who has to be mentioned for his dramatic presentation of Shostakovich’s crucial timpani part, it would be inappropriate to single out other orchestral soloists, for what Schwarz drew from his orchestra was essentially an ensemble triumph. It is the contribution of those violas that will remain most indelibly etched on my mind, along with that of the cellos and basses–their deliberately paced pizzicato commentary was so delicately done that you felt it almost more than hearing it, yet it was there on the edge of consciousness, palpable, unmissable, and it tugged, ever so softly, at the heart. All of this went to strengthen my conviction that, with the possible exceptions of Yakov Kreizberg and Ignat Solzhenitsyn, Gerard Schwarz has no rival among present-day conductors as an interpreter of Shostakovich.

The concert had begun with a brilliant piece of programming. This was my first encounter with Russian Funeral, composed by Benjamin Britten when he was 22, scored for brass and percussion, and based on the same song, “You fell as victims,” used in Shostakovich’s third movement. (Apparently the maestro had been made aware of the Britten piece by a private research unit he has at his disposal – none other than his gifted cellist son, Julian Schwarz.) Performed with suitable vigor, it was followed by Liszt’s Second Piano Concerto, in which Arnaldo Cohen’s projection of the solo part combined virtuosity, lyrical grace, and the elegance without which Liszt can be unjustly made to sound vulgar. The Brazilian pianist’s tone is clean, warm, and blessedly free of harshness throughout the instrument’s range, but perhaps the most remarkable feature of his playing emerges in passages at the top of the keyboard: where many pianists seem merely to tinkle, he is able to conjure a sound that has true body. The performance was a worthy centerpiece for one of the season’s outstanding concerts to date.

Bernard Jacobson

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