Ravinia 2023 Issue 5

PAUL MARC MITCHELL (J. WEILERSTEIN); MARCO BORGGREVE (A. WEILERSTEIN) Harold Denny: “COMPOSER REGAINS HIS PLACE IN SOVIET. Dmitri Shostakovich, who fell from grace two years ago, on the way to rehabilitation. His new symphony hailed. Au- dience cheers as Leningrad Philharmonic presents work.” Although Aram Khachaturi- an’s Piano Concerto also received its premiere on that November 21 concert at the Festival of Soviet Music, which celebrated the 20th anni- versary of the October Revolution, it was Dmitri Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 5 that brought the audience to its feet. The diminu- tive, bespectacled composer walked onstage dozens of times to acknowledge the thunder- ous ovation. One audience member, A.N. Glumov, recalled conductor Yevgeny Mravinsky’s grandiose, selfless gesture: “[He] lifted the score high above his head, so as to show that it was not he, the conductor, or the orchestra who deserved this storm of ap- plause, these shouts of ‘bravo’; the success be- longed to the creator of this work.” The Symphony No. 5 offered more than “re- habilitation”: it was a glorious resurrection for the recently beleaguered Shostakovich. His troubles began on January 28, 1936, when Pravda printed an aggressive attack against his latest (and popularly acclaimed) opera Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District . Titled “Muddle instead of Music,” this article con- demned the “Leftist confusion instead of nat- ural, human music. The power of good music to infect the masses has been sacrificed to a petty-bourgeois, Formalist attempt to create originality through cheap clowning. It is a game of clever ingenuity that may end very badly.” So it did for Shostakovich and other “Formalist” composers. The Union of Soviet Composers convened in February and pub- licly denounced Shostakovich. This official act of humiliation initiated the Soviet perse- cution of progressive artists and musicians that lasted throughout the Stalin years. Shostakovich reclaimed some credibility with his Symphony No. 5, dubbed “the creative re- ply of a Soviet artist to justified criticism” (an epithet belonging to a journalist, not the com- poser). Not all party officials were convinced Dmitri Shostakovich (1950) by the people’s enthusiasm for the work. Some complained openly at the concert hall that the audience had been hand-selected for the pre- miere, and their ovation was therefore viewed with skepticism. Others doubted that the young composer could “rehabilitate” in such a short period. Shostakovich kept party crit- icism at bay by announcing plans for a Sym- phony No. 6 dedicated to Lenin. Twenty-four years passed before he composed the Sympho- ny No. 12 (“The Year 1917”) to Lenin’s memory. In the wake of Soviet censures, Shostakovich cultivated a type of musical schizophrenia wherein he proclaimed public ideals through the symphonic form while submerging his private thoughts in the string quartet me- dium. (By the end of his life, he had writ- ten an equal number of symphonies and quartets—15.) The Symphony No. 5 retained vaguely autobiographical meaning for the composer: “The theme of my symphony is the making of man. I saw man with all his experi- ences in the center of the composition, which is lyrical in form from beginning to end. The finale is the optimistic solution of the trag- ically tense moment of the first movement.” Shostakovich’s opening Moderato initially dwells on imitative (“Formalist”) treatment of a contorted theme characterized by me- lodic leaps, chromatic harmonies, and dotted rhythms. Violins offer the second theme, a slow-moving melody accompanied by long– short–short rhythms in the lower strings. The development begins with an ostinato played by the piano and an ominous, descending horn melody. Excitement builds steadily as the music accelerates. A militaristic section enters, complete with snare drum. Close im- itation based on the opening theme merges with the fortissimo recapitulation. A flute qui- etly restates the contrasting theme, and the music fades toward the end. The Allegretto is the scherzo movement. Cellos and double basses begin a triple-meter dance. Woodwinds then introduce enthusiastic dot- ted rhythms, and the horns add a heroic strain. The trio begins with a solo violin melody. A relatively complete version of the scherzo fol- lows. The coda harks back to the trio theme. Reduced instrumentation—lacking brass and most percussion—and subdivided strings reinforce the Largo ’s introspective quality. Shostakovich advanced several lyrical themes toward the cause of extended symphonic con- templation. The march-like final movement explodes with pounding timpani and blaring brass, disturbing the slow movement’s sus- tained tranquility. Repetitious long–short– short rhythmic patterns build to the loud string and woodwind theme. A French horn soliloquy restores lyricism to the symphony. Strings sustain this melodious tranquility. The march theme begins slowly then acceler- ates for the triumphant D-major conclusion. –Program notes © 2023 Todd E. Sullivan JOSHUA WEILERSTEIN Joshua Weilerstein has been enjoying a flour- ishing guest conducting career around the globe, devoted equally to canonical master- pieces and the works of under-represented composers such as Pavel Haas, William Grant Still, William Levi Dawson, and Ethel Smyth. A tireless advocate for contemporary works, he has championed new music from the likes of Christopher Rouse, Caroline Shaw, Derrick Skye, Jörg Widmann, and more. Weilerstein is currently the Music Director of Phoenix, a Boston-based orchestra dedicated to acces- sible concert presentations and promotion of works by unjustly overlooked composers. He was recently announced as the new Chief Conductor of Denmark’s Aalborg Symphony Orchestra, to take the post during the 2023– 24 concert season, having served as Assistant Conductor of the New York Philharmonic 2012–15 following his first prize and audience prize honors at the 2009 Malko Competition. During the 2022–23 season, Weilerstein made debuts with the Bavarian Radio Symphony and Madrid’s RTVE Symphony and returned to the Indianapolis and Vancouver Sympho- nies, Florida Orchestra, Swedish Chamber Orchestra, National Orchestras of Belgium and Lille, and London, Netherlands, Royal Liverpool, and Royal Stockholm Philhar- monics. He also returned to the Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne, which he led as Artistic Director 2015–21. During his tenure, Weilerstein expanded the orchestra’s reper- toire and discography, spearheading critically acclaimed recordings of Shostakovich, Stra- vinsky, Smyth, and Ives works along with a Beethoven symphony cycle. They also toured Europe with such soloists as tenor Juan Di- ego Flórez, oboist Albrecht Mayer, and vi- olinist Christian Tetzlaff. In recent seasons, Weilerstein has also been a guest conductor of the San Francisco and Seattle Symphonies, Philadelphia Orchestra, and New York Phil- harmonic, and in Europe, with the Bergen and Oslo Philharmonics, Danish National Symphony, Zurich’s Tonhalle Orchestra, and Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie. He also hosts the Sticky Notes podcast, which has over two million downloads across 165 countries. Joshua Weilerstein is making his Ravinia and Chicago Symphony Orchestra debuts, having conducted a Civic Orchestra of Chicago per- formance in 2017. ALISA WEILERSTEIN Cellist Alisa Weilerstein made her Cleveland Orchestra debut at age 13, and less than two years later she made her first appearance at Carnegie Hall with the New York Youth Sym- phony. She went on to study at the Cleveland Institute of Music and later earned a degree in history from Columbia University. In 2011 Weilerstein was named a MacArthur Foundation Fellow, having previously been honored with an Avery Fisher Career Grant and both Lincoln Center’s Leonard Bernstein Award and Martin E. Segal Prize. A commit- ted champion of new music, Weilerstein has worked closely with Lera Auerbach, whose 24 preludes for cello and piano she premiered with the composer, and Osvaldo Golijov, fre- quently performing his orchestral Azul and solo Omaramor , as well as Pascal Dusapin and Matthias Pintscher, who wrote the con- certos Outscape and Un despertar for her on commissions from the Chicago and Boston Symphonies, respectively. She most recently premiered Joan Tower’s A New Day with the Detroit Symphony, also performing the work with the Cleveland Orchestra and National Symphony, all three ensembles being co-com- missioners. With her new multi-season proj- ect “Fragments”—debuted in Toronto in early 2023 and touring to Carnegie Hall and beyond—Weilerstein is creating a multisen- sory production that weaves 27 commissions among the 36 movements of Bach’s solo cello suites, recordings of which she released on Pentatone in 2020 and as part of her #36Day- sOfBach online series. Her Vox.com video de- constructing Bach’s G-minor prelude has had over two million views. Weilerstein has also released perforemances of Beethoven’s cello sonatas and “Triple” Concerto with frequent recording partner pianist Inon Barnatan on Pentatone, as well as Haydn’s two cello con- certos and Schoenberg’s Transfigured Night with the Trondheim Soloists. For the Decca label, she and Barnatan recorded a compila- tion of 20th-century solo-cello works as well as Rachmaninoff ’s and Chopin’s cello sonatas, and Weilerstein also recorded concertos by Elgar and Carter with the Berlin Staatskapelle and Dvořák’s Cello Concerto with the Czech Philharmonic. Alisa Weilerstein made her Ravinia debut in 1998 and tonight makes her sixth appearance at the festival. RAVINIA MAGAZINE • AUGUST 15 – AUGUST 27, 2023 26 I . I I ; . I I