Ravinia_2018_Issue_5_Week

MARIN ALSOP,

conductor

e rst-ever “music curator” at Ravinia, Marin

Alsop is overseeing the festival’s multi-year

celebration of Leonard Bernstein’s centennial,

including six concerts with the Chicago Sym-

phony Orchestra this summer. She began her

professional education at

e Juilliard School,

where she earned both a bachelor’s and a mas-

ter’s degree, and Yale University, which awarded

her an honorary doctorate in

; her career

was launched in

when she became the rst

woman to be awarded the Koussevitzky Con-

ducting Prize from Tanglewood, where she be-

came Bernstein’s rst female and nal protégé.

She is also the only conductor to have been

awarded a MacArthur Fellowship, is an honor-

ary member of the Royal Academy of Music and

Royal Philharmonic Society, and was recently

appointed the director of graduate conduct-

ing at the Peabody Institute of Johns Hopkins

University. In addition to her role at Ravinia,

Alsop is central to Bernstein celebrations with

the London Symphony Orchestra, with which

she has a close and long-standing relationship,

and the Southbank Centre, where she is an art-

ist-in-residence. She has been music director of

the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra since

and is tenured until

, having had success not

only with the ensemble but also with her Orch-

Kids youth music initiative and the BSO Acad-

emy and Rusty Musicians adult program. She

has also been principal conductor and music

director of the São Paulo Symphony Orchestra

since

, leading the ensemble on three ex-

tensive European tours to date, and will become

chief conductor of the ORF Vienna Radio Sym-

phony Orchestra in

. In addition to regular

engagements with the CSO and Cleveland and

Philadelphia Orchestras, Alsop frequently con-

ducts such European ensembles as the Leipzig

Gewandhaus Orchestra, Royal Concertgebouw

Orchestra, Filarmonica della Scala, and London

and Royal Philharmonic Orchestras. Her exten-

sive discography has earned multiple

Gramo-

phone

Awards and includes acclaimed Brahms,

Dvořák, and Proko ev cycles on Naxos and

further recordings on Decca, Harmonia Mun-

di, and Sony Classical. Marin Alsop made her

Ravinia and CSO debuts in

and tonight

makes her h season appearance at the festival.

to create originality through cheap clowning.

It is a game of clever ingenuity that may end

very badly.” So it did for Shostakovich and oth-

er “Formalist” composers.

e Union of Soviet

Composers convened in February and public-

ly denounced Shostakovich.

is o cial act of

humiliation initiated the Soviet persecution of

progressive artists and musicians that lasted

throughout the Stalin years.

Shostakovich reclaimed some credibility with

his Symphony No. , dubbed “the creative reply

of a Soviet artist to justi ed criticism” (a subti-

tle belonging to a journalist, not the composer).

Not all party o cials were convinced by the peo-

ple’s enthusiasm for the work. Some complained

openly at the concert hall that the audience had

been hand-selected for the premiere, and their

ovation was therefore viewed with skepticism.

Others doubted that the young composer could

“rehabilitate” in such a short period. Shostakov-

ich kept party criticism at bay by announcing

plans for a Symphony No. dedicated to Lenin.

Twenty-four years passed before he composed

the Symphony No.

(“ e Year ”) to Le-

nin’s memory.

In the wake of Soviet censures, Shostakov-

ich cultivated a type of musical schizophrenia

wherein he proclaimed public ideals through

the symphonic form while submerging his pri-

vate thoughts in the string quartet medium. (By

the end of his life, he had written an equal num-

ber of symphonies and quartets— .) e Sym-

phony No. retained vaguely autobiographical

meaning for the composer: “ e theme of my

symphony is the making of man. I saw man with

all his experiences in the center of the composi-

tion, which is lyrical in form from beginning to

end.

e nale is the optimistic solution of the

tragically tense moment of the rst movement.”

Shostakovich’s opening

Moderato

initially dwells

on imitative (“Formalist”) treatment of a con-

torted theme characterized by melodic leaps,

chromatic harmonies, and dotted rhythms.

Violins o er the second theme, a slow-mov-

ing melody accompanied by long–short–short

rhythms in the lower strings.

e development

begins with an ostinato played by the piano and

an ominous, descending horn melody. Excite-

ment builds steadily as the music accelerates. A

militaristic section enters, complete with snare

drum. Close imitation based on the opening

theme merges with the

fortissimo

recapitulation.

A ute quietly restates the contrasting theme,

and the music fades toward the end.

Allegretto

is the

scherzo

movement. Cellos

and double basses begin a triple-meter dance.

Woodwinds then introduce enthusiastic dotted

rhythms, and the horns add a heroic strain. e

trio

begins with a solo violin melody. A relative-

ly complete version of the

scherzo

follows.

coda harks back to the

trio

theme.

Reduced instrumentation—lacking brass and

most percussion—and subdivided strings rein-

force the

Largo

’s introspective quality. Shosta-

kovich advanced several lyrical themes toward

the cause of extended symphonic contempla-

tion.

e march-like nal movement explodes

with pounding timpani and blaring brass, dis-

turbing the slow movement’s sustained tran-

quility. Repetitious long–short–short rhythmic

patterns build to the loud string and woodwind

theme. A French horn soliloquy restores lyri-

cism to the symphony. Strings sustain this melo-

dious tranquility. e march theme begins slow-

ly then accelerates for the triumphant D-major

conclusion.

Todd E. Sullivan

Dmitri Shostakovich and Leonard Bernstein (1959)

AUGUST 13 – AUGUST 19, 2018 | RAVINIA MAGAZINE

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