Germany Auerbach, Shostakovich: Soloists and Gewandhauschor, Gewandhausorchestra / Alan Gilbert (conductor). Grosser Saal of the Leipzig Gewandhaus, 11.1.2024. (GT)
Lera Auerbach – Symphony No.6 ‘Lichtgefässe’ (Vessels of Light)
Shostakovich – Symphony No.10 in E minor, Op.93
Soloists – Kristina Reiko Cooper (cello), Johanna Ihrig (soprano), Nora Steuerwald (alto), Falk Hoffmann (tenor), Steven Klose (bass), Eliana Pliskin Jacobs, Sasha Lurje, Daniel Kahn, Karsten Troyke (speakers)
The Russian-born Lera Auerbach musician, painter and writer has developed a major career with her compositions performed by leading orchestras and musicians. She embraces different trends in world music, often using folk and jazz influences and continues to evolve her style of composition. This piece for cello, mixed chorus, singers, whisperers and orchestra dates from 2022 and was initially the idea of the Israeli musician Kristina Reiko Cooper, who wanted to commission a piece based on the Holocaust and was supported by UCLA. The symphony (Vessels of Light) is based on a libretto by Auerbach, using texts from the World Holocaust Centre and the American Society of Yad Vashem. There are five movements with a prologue and epilogue.
The music opened on tapes and whispering in the darkened hall and as light returned the solo cello opened with a melancholy theme, which was repeated throughout the 45-minute performance. The cello soloist Kristina Reiko Cooper was searching in her solo passages – evincing all the humanity of Auerbach’s score – her part was almost like a concerto soloist accompanied by the orchestra and choir.
The most striking individual performance was by the soprano Johanna Ihrig, whose singing in Yiddish in the great opening movement ‘Scherben und Flüstern’ was tremendously moving with a voice ranging to the highest notes and she was finely supported in the other singing in Yiddish, especially by Falk Hoffmann and Steven Klose. The movements included texts from Psalm 121, a portrayal in music of painter Malevich’s Black Square, and writings from Jewish poets Dovid Hofshteyn, Perets Markish, Avrom Sutzkever, Simkha-Bunim Shayevitch, Yisroel Emyot, Reyzl Zhikhlinski and Itzik Manger.
Alan Gilbert held the work together masterfully and carried this tragic message throughout this heart-rending symphony, closing finally in the enlightening epilogue ‘Wunder’, allowing brightness to shine through after the agonies of the Holocaust. The work proved an appropriate opener to this evening of symphonies devoted to the tragedies of mankind – both of which offer hope.
The performance of Shostakovich’s Tenth Symphony was a preamble to next year’s celebration of the composer in the Shostakovich Festival in May/June 2025 at the Gewandhaus. Every two years, this remarkable orchestra celebrates the works of a single composer; in past years, it has been Mahler, Wagner, and Beethoven joined by some of the world’s finest orchestras visiting together with chamber ensembles and soloists. Auerbach’s ‘Vessels of Light’, set the tone well in its darkly atmospheric and tragic undertones.
The Tenth is often regarded as Shostakovich’s greatest masterpiece and hinted at a new phase in life. Without a programme, the Tenth reflects the postwar years and the country’s rebuilding and recovery from the devastation of the war years. That the composer had not written a symphony since 1945 reveals the depth of feeling embodied in the work’s composition. The first movement (Moderato) opened on the low strings with great concentration – as if on a journey of enlightenment and struggle. The uniformity of the violin playing was enhanced with enormous gravitas by the cellos and double basses.
Shostakovich – in his finest works – gives the woodwind sublime expression – often sounding like voices from the past – of lost friends and those still alive and the clarinet theme from Bettina Aust was extraordinarily sensitive in its humanity and courage. The American conductor Gilbert carefully drew out every nuance by coaxing his musicians to evince all the spirit of the music. As the clarinet theme was repeated through the orchestra, one sensed the slow but inevitable development towards a massive culmination as the themes became intertwined and more powerful. Yet, at the closing bars of this prolonged movement, the musical sequence became muted in a more passive and thoughtful passage on the piccolo.
The transitory scherzo (Allegro) was a tour de force in its brilliant, exciting sequences played at a tremendously furious pace, with the brass group bursting forth together with the percussion as if in explosions of anger. The opening of the third movement (Allegretto) was rhythmically ambiguous with the eloquent theme heard on the violins followed by the introduction of the captivating motif of the composer’s signature on the violins D/E-flat/C/B. This led to the solitary, pensive idea on the solo horn of Ralf Götz, before there was a shift in the tension heard on the strings and repeated eleven times before the passage closed mysteriously with the flute of Katalin Stefula and the piccolos.
The finale (Andante-Allegro) opened meditatively in the cellos and violas with a woodwind idea which became increasingly striking and once more there was some delightfully attractive playing revealing the virtuosity of Aust on the clarinet, Henrik Wahlgren’s oboe, Susanne Wettemann’s cor anglais, and David Petersen’s bassoon. This heralded a more cheerful, buoyant idea taken up by the whole orchestra at an increased tempo before ending on the ‘DSCH’ motif on the horn and timpani bringing this masterly symphony to a close.
This was a terrific concert of two quite different symphonic works – both by Russian composers sharing similar expressions of their homeland’s tragic and glorious past and offering a prodigious hint of the Shostakovich Festival to be hosted by the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra in 2025.
Gregor Tassie