Arts & Events

Dimitri Shostakovich wrote his Cello Concerto No. 1 for cellist Mstislav Rostropovich, to whom the score is dedicated. Upon receiving the finished score, Rostropovich reportedly learned the entire work by memory in only four days and then played the work brilliantly for an “astounded” Shostakovich at its premiere with the Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra on October 4, 1959 with Eugene Mravinsky conducting. A few months later, Rostropovich recorded this work with the New York Philharmonic under Leonard Bernstein, and this recording has remained the authoritative version of the Shostakovich Cello Concerto No. 1. Now, however, along comes cellist Gautier Capuçon, whom I find a likely heir apparent to the late Rostropovich. Capuçon shares with Rostropovich the same vigorously physical playing style along with an intensely emotional commitment to the score. The results, as we heard Saturday evening, March 4, at Davies Hall with San Francisco Symphony led by Michael Tilson Thomas, were intensely gripping. 

The opening movement, marked Allegretto, offers a four-note theme that recurs repeatedly, surfacing again in the final movement. The cello begins in the high range of the instrument, and the constantly shifting dynamics of this opening movement create a certain moody suspense. The orchestra chimes in with dark, brooding rumblings from the contrabassoon and contrastingly shrill woodwinds. The second movement, marked Moderato, opens with a solo horn, beautifully rendered by Bruce Roberts, backed by strings. Then the cello offers a subtle, darkly melodic theme, exquisitely played by Capuçon. This theme and a second one build toward a climax, which is quickly followed by a reprise of the work’s initial material. This transitions into the third movement, a cadenza thoroughly written out by Shostakovich as a separate movement. Here Capuçon produced wondrous music, with vigorous attacks and virtuoso double-stops as well as pizzicato plucking. This entire cadenza is played with no orchestral accompaniment. It is a prodigious show-stopper for a virtuoso cellist! When the orchestra eventually chimes in, we have transitioned to the work’s finale, a fast movement marked Allegro con moto. Here the wok’s initial four-note theme returns, this time aggressively fast-paced; and the concerto steams ahead at full speed to a rousing close. For any cellist who plays as ferociously as Capuçon and Rostropovich, there may be occasional intonation issues. But I’ll happily take any minor intonation problems over a technically precise rendition lacking the searingly emotional involvement of a Capuçon or a Rostropovich. At the close of this San Francisco Symphony performance of the Shostakovich Cello Concerto No. 1, soloist Gautier Capuçon and conductor Michael Tilson Thomas took their bows to thunderous applause from an appreciative audience. 

The work that opened the program, a rarely heard piece with the unlikely title The Jewish Orchestra at the Ball of Nothingtown, was a glib, ingratiating work by Mikhail Fabionovich Gnesin, a Russian pioneer of Jewish art music. Consisting of a brief overture and five dances, this work shared some affinities with klezmer music, though it avoided the mad, almost demented frenzy of much klezmer music. On the other hand, it remained shallow throughout. Perhaps MTT chose to program this obscure and eminently forgettable piece because he heard in it some of the music his Russian forebears might have listened to or even played.  

After intermission, MTT returned to lead the orchestra in Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 6 in B minor, “Pathétique.” When I first heard this symphony in a live performance back in the late 1960s with the Oakland Symphony under Gerhard Samuel, I was taken aback by the alternations between lovely melodic passages and boisterous, bombastic passages. The work as a whole did not seem to adhere in any cohesive way, to my mind. Over the years, however, I have come to understand the general architecture of this symphony; and while I still deplore the stretches of bombast, I cherish the achingly beautiful melody of the opening movement and the broad, sweeping melody of the finale. In between, there are two movements constituting a kind of intermezzo. The Allegro molto vivace offers a mad scherzo, played at full throttle, with demanding passages for the timpanist. Here too there is bombast aplenty, but I’ve learned to accept it in this work. The loud march at the beginning of the final movement has its share of bombast as well, but at least here there is a sardonic humor involved. When the march ends with a bang, a broad, sweeping melody ensues, and this melody unfolds with great beauty and solemnity. Gradually, however, it fades away, ending on a softly dying note that audiences initially found utterly strange as a conclusion, but which took on prophetic meaning when, nine days after this symphony’s premiere in St. Petersburg, Tchaikovsky suddenly died in mysterious circumstances at age 53. Here in San Francisco, under the baton of Michael Tilson Thomas, Tchaikovsky’s Pathétique Symphony received a taut, utterly convincing performance, one that was recorded on Saturday evening and will be issued as a CD in the near future. I look forward to hearing it, as this work continues to grow on me.