Orchestra's Shostakovich/Mahler bill

Ghosts in Verizon Hall
(aside from Eschenbach's successor)

ROBERT ZALLER

Three large but invisible presences loomed over Verizon Hall at the Philadelphia Orchestra’s November 24 concert. The obvious one was the as yet to be determined successor to the beleaguered Christoph Eschenbach, essentially overthrown in a palace revolt by his orchestra in one of the stranger chapters in Philadelphia’s musical history. The second was Msistlav Rostropovich, the great Russian cellist for whom the Shostakovich First Cello Concerto was written and who has owned it ever since. The third was that of Beethoven.

As Alex Ross pointed out in the November 20 New Yorker, while Valery Gergeiev was completing his Shostakovich symphony cycle at Avery Fisher Hall in New York last month, Bernard Haitink was conducting the Beethoven nine at Carnegie Hall. Each generation seems to throw up its own figure to compete with Ludwig’s mighty shadow. Brahms labored long in it, only to see his much-anticipated First Symphony dubbed the Beethoven Tenth (though if that is damning with faint praise, few would reject it).

The symphony: an endangered species?

The Sibelius seven broke new ground formally and sonically in the first quarter of the 20th Century, and critics in Britain particularly spoke of them in terms of the “successors” to Beethoven. By that time, the symphony itself was beginning to seem an endangered species. Plenty of new symphonies were still being composed, but neither Bartok nor Schoenberg produced one, at least for full orchestra; and Stravinsky, though he wrote four, never bothered to number them. The public appetite for symphonies was still undiminished, however, and when Leonard Bernstein popularized the Mahler set in the 1960s, Ludwig had a new kid on the block to reckon with. The Mahler vogue lasted out the century. Then came Shostakovich.

It would not be quite accurate to say that Shostakovich has displaced Mahler in the first quarter of the present century— for one thing, there is too much of Mahler in Shostakovich himself, as there was much of Beethoven in Brahms. But Shostakovich did compose more symphonies than any other major composer after Beethoven; and though some of them have long been concert staples, many are far less familiar, even rare. They also span the middle decades of the last century— the First composed in 1924-25, the Fifteenth and last in 1971— and they speak to the agonies of the time as do none other.

Mahler is of another age. He died in 1911, before either of the world wars or the long grief of Communism to which Shostakovich bore witness. Shostakovich is still contemporary. Mahler, though the length and complexity of his scores still makesperformances of his music an event, is now repertory.

Wellerstein holds her own

So here they both were, in a rare pairing— when is the last time you’ve heard them together on the same program?— not, to be sure, each represented by a symphony, but at least by a major symphonic work. The Shostakovich First Cello Concerto had its American premiere in Philadelphia in 1926, with a galaxy of Soviet musical luminaries in attendance, including the composer himself. It has since established itself as one of the two major 20th Century concertos for cello (the other being Elgar’s). Rostropovich played it here. That was a legendary performance, and no one has matched Slava’s sweep and power since.

That does not mean, of course, that there is no room for other interpretations, and that even lesser ones do not have something to say. The young Alisa Wellerstein more than held her own, despite some questionable ritards in the first movement. Like many Shostakovich scores, the First is formally quirky, with brief outer movements framing a long central one— sometimes (though misleadingly) regarded as two movements in itself, with its daringly long cadenza as an independent one. This is where the cellist must show particular mettle, and Wellerstein did. The accompaniment displayed none of Eschenbach’s own quirks, though one passage in the opening movement did get muddied.

Eschenbach takes his time with Mahler

The Mahler Fourth is one of Mahler’s shorter and less emotionally problematic works, though it is knotty enough, and it stretched out in this performance to roughly an hour— Eschenbach always times long, though, unlike the later Bernstein recordings of Mahler, he does not drag. He does, notoriously, play with tempi, and this performance was no exception. At his best, Eschenbach makes you rethink familiar scores; at his other extreme, he simply makes you uncomfortable with them. Marisol Montalvo was the underpowered soprano in the last movement, though she sang well enough in the Schubert postlude that followed the concert.

Whatever Eschenbach must be going through now, he keeps a good poker face. After the longueurs of the Sawallisch regime—oh, no, not Strauss again!— his broader repertoire and his willingness to take risks has been welcome in an orchestra whose tendency to complacency was too often indulged by Eschenbach’s predecessor. He has certainly been less erratic than Simon Rattle, who conducted a performance of the Sibelius Fifth here some years back that is still engraved in my memory as the most willfully perverse I have ever heard. And Eschenbach did get the Orchestra back to recording: The performance I attended was being taped.

As for Beethoven and his epigonis, Shostakovich may prove the last. Alfred Schnittke wrote eight symphonies, and Philip Glass has composed a slew. Neither has caught on, and more recent composers have ostentatiously avoided the form. Perhaps a new champion awaits us, but there is no sign of him, or her, as yet. It looks as though Ludwig may well retire his crown, like Rocky Marciano, forever undefeated.



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