Germany Shostakovich Festival Leipzig [4]: Boston Symphony Orchestra / Andris Nelsons (conductor), Gewandhaus, Leipzig. 18.5.2025. (GT)
Shostakovich – Symphony No.6 in B minor, Op.54; Symphony No.15 in A major, Op. 141
This concert showcased two symphonies from quite different periods in the composer’s career: one immediately before the Second World War, and the other, his final symphonic work summarising his career in music. The concert was also an opportunity – in their third concert – to judge the orchestra with the Gewandhaus Orchestra which opened the Shostakovich Festival here in Leipzig.
The Leipzig musicians have a distinct sound quality that is both lean and warm in its tonal colour – a sonic balance that is equally appropriate for both the classics and the modernist composers of the twentieth century. The Boston Symphony has an immaculate tone, which is ideal for modern music, especially for Shostakovich. The individual mastery of the orchestra evident in solo passages and in the ensemble sequences reveal an almost clinical attention to detail, however, there is a tonal warmth and a precision in the Leipzig musicians which offers a warmer quality in sound. Of course, Andris Nelsons is the conductor of both orchestras, and he can achieve almost any music-making that he wants from his musicians, and he evinces the tonality required in each work.
The Sixth Symphony follows the immensely successful Fifth Symphony, which re-launched his career after the failure of his opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk in 1936. It engages different musical themes, and despite only three movements, it presents outstanding invention. The first movement (Largo) opened with a threnody of tragedy on the strings which instilled upon the audience an idiom of almost complete desolation that rose to a forbidding crescendo of agonising power on the brass and percussion. The tragic depth of sound by the strings was embraced by the brass group, and the solo piccolo gave an invocation of untold loneliness. Suddenly, the trumpet induces abrupt horror, accentuated by the cor anglais, and in a chamber passage, the flute hints at the imagery of a solitary dove hovering over a field of dead.
In the second movement (Allegro) we were transported to a quite different world; there was now a sparkling bright joie de vivre and celebration of life, perhaps reflecting the composer’s happiness after the birth of his son, Maxim. In the third movement (Presto) the mood of unbridled joy continued with effortless gaiety and exhilarating playing, enhanced by a delightful violin solo and the ebullient brass enjoying an exultant living exuberance!
The Fifteenth Symphony ended the symphonic career of Shostakovich, although he lived for another four years. The score reflects his life and creativity with bizarre quotations and swiftly changing idioms which baffle listeners. In the opening movement (Allegretto) the chirpy flute – accompanied by the ebullient brass – is followed by a bizarre mechanical ticking from the xylophone, and there suddenly appeared a carnival festive theme, with terrific playing on the double basses, accompanied by the violin and chirpy woodwind, and invoking cheerily announced William Tell quotations.
The second movement (Adagio) opened with a reflective cello solo, with the mourning-like passage enhanced by the superbly virtuosic violins and of a martial funeral march by the brass. Shostakovich amazingly then switches us to another idiom which was of overwhelming sadness and desolation expressed by the solo violin, and again the mood changed to a menacing climax on the trombones, tuba and the strings. In the third movement (Allegretto) we heard mockingly played woodwind passages taking us to a solo sequence on the violin that was almost a harbinger of death in its tonality and closed quietly with the tick-tock on the percussion.
The fourth movement (Adagio) brought a quotation from the brass of the funeral march from Siegfried and a passage of great beauty from the violins that hints at a song by Glinka in another of the composer’s memories. The sequence closed with a passacaglia in which, following the wonderful clarinet solo and a defiant roar from the brass; ever so slowly, we hear echoes from throughout the composer’s career and finally to the thoughtfully expressed final bars on the celesta.
Gregor Tassie