Dallas Symphony Orchestra Jaap van Zweden, conductor
Britten Violin Concerto op.15
“Shostakovich’s Seventh is Fascinating and Thrilling, But is it Art or Artifact?”
By Wayne Lee Gay
Dates Feb 18 thru Feb 20
Shostakovich’s Seventh Symphony, the main item on this weekend’s concerts by the Dallas Symphony and conductor Jaap van Zweden, presents its composer at his best and his worst. The events of 1940 and 1941—specifically, the near-collapse of European civilization in the onslaught of Hitler’s genocidal militarism—called for a grand orchestral work to represent, to the world, the brave resistance of the city of Leningrad in the face of a catastrophic siege. Working, at least part of the time, literally within earshot of the battle, Shostakovich produced the symphony the world needed and wanted.
At Thursday night’s performance at Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center, it was easy to admire and enjoy Shostakovich’s accomplishment in what came to be known as the “Leningrad” Symphony, thanks to the meticulous and passionate rendition of the seventy-minute piece by van Zweden and the orchestra. Shostakovich poured everything he knew about orchestral sound and about musical timing and emotion into the piece; his lifelong study of Mahler paid off in the constant creation of striking, often glorious, and sometimes nearly frightening orchestral effects. Lonely solos, volcanic eruptions of orchestral sound, and brilliant use of motifs abound; it is, to summarize, the biggest and one of the most impressive pieces of musical propaganda ever written.
And, like all pieces of propaganda, Shostakovich’s Seventh has its downside. The craftsmanship and design are impeccable, but the end result leaves the listener feeling emotionally exploited. One might argue that Shostakovich here, as in so many other instances, was sending an ulterior message of resistance to all tyranny, including the Stalinist regime for which he worked. And, one might, with little difficulty, hear the irresistible set of variations in the first movement, which, at least on the surface, represents the approaching German army, as a warning of the evil of banality. One might even hear the anguish of a people who, having thrown off the yoke of czarist oppression, find themselves under the even greater oppression of Stalinism, which they must in turn support wholeheartedly in the fight against the even greater threat of Naziism. In short, Shostakovich’s Seventh is thrilling to hear, and interesting on several levels—ranging from its historical context to the philosophical questions it raises concerning the function of art. But, in the end, it’s more artifact than art.
The concert had opened with a rare performance of Britten’s Violin Concerto of 1940, with conductor van Zweden’s Dutch compatriot Simone Lamsma as soloist. The piece is bravely experimental, featuring a constant tug-of-war between the young composer’s tendency toward romantic lyricism on one hand and bleak modernity on the other; indeed, the juxtaposition of the two was sometimes breathtaking in this convincingly devoted performance by Lamsma, van Zweden, and the orchestra.
Still, there’s a reason that this work, while worthy of an occasional dusting off, probably won’t ever be part of the standard repertoire. Here, Britten is clearly fast approaching the confident innocence of his masterful choral miniatures, the worldly pessimism of his opera Peter Grimes, and the brilliant, complex ambiguity of the War Requiem—but he’s not quite there yet.
