Symphony revels
By Ruth Bingham
in Shostakovich’s
rebellious work
Special to the Star-BulletinHonolulu Symphony Russian Festival Part I: With pianist Alex Slobodyanik, 7:30 p.m. tomorrow, Blaisdell Concert Hal1. Tickets for individual concerts in the three-part series are $15-$50; $39-$120 for the entire series. Call 538-8863.
THE Soviets were right to fear composer Dmitri Shostakovich. Anyone who can simultaneously conform and rebel, glorify and condemn, is far too great a threat to keep around.
History apparently agreed. Not only has Shostakovich's music outlasted the Soviet regime, but the very same work they heard as praise, we can hear as censure.
Shostakovich's Fifth Symphony has long been understood in the West as an extended double-entendre. That may be part of its success. For the Honolulu Symphony's concert yesterday, conductor Samuel Wong followed the darker underside of that double-entendre in an interpretation that emphasized Shostakovich's nose-thumbing rebellion.
In Wong's reading, Shostakovich mocked Soviet pretensions with a lightly lilting Viennese waltz ... performed by a lumbering Russian circus bear, replete with dissonances and stumbles.
His third movement, a long slow piece (which likely lulled the music police to sleep), not only captured the country's vastness and beauty but became a wrenchingly moving elegy for a lost Russia. And the garish, slightly manic finale was reminiscent of a clown performing while crying inside: the celebration, a charade; the triumphal, ham-fisted ending, hollow. It was a brilliant performance.
It was also a brilliant condemnation of the Soviet Union. Listening to the piece, one can only wonder why Shostakovich wasn't arrested and shot for composing it.
Yesterday's concert featured 24-year-old Russian pianist Alex Slobodyanik in a bravura performance of Sergei Prokofiev's Piano Concerto No.3. Slobodyanik first learned the concerto in only 20 days. It would take most of us that long just to read through the deluge of notes.
But Slobodyanik did much more than just get through all those notes. He has said he felt "comfortable playing Russian music because of my background," voicing his part with an innate understanding that highlighted Prokofiev's lush lyricism.
Owing to balance, Slobodyanik was more partner than soloist, although his rapport with the orchestra seemed to weaken when he assumed the accompaniment role. Slobodyanik displayed a wide range of expression, from magical glittering fogs to angular cascading explosions, clearly enchanting the audience.
Wong rounded out the program with Mikhail Glinka's most enduring work, the overture to his rarely-if-ever performed opera Russlan i Lyudmila based on Pushkin. The piece is more a flourish than an overture, whirling past in a flurry of strings. Even the legato theme sweeps briskly by. The tempo may have been a bit too brisk for the winds at first, but they caught the pace and all ended in an exciting dash.
Appropriately, Glinka as the so-called father of Russian music opened Honolulu Symphony's three-concert mini-festival of Russian music. In addition to this concert's Prokofiev and Shostakovich, the festival will include works by Rachmaninoff, Tchaikovsky (probably the most popular Russian composer), and Stravinsky (the greatest of all Russian composers).
Ruth O. Bingham has a Ph.D. in
musicology from Cornell University.
