Mozart and Shostakovich Symphonies at Severance

Contrasting symphonies from the 18^th and 20^th centuries were on the program at this weekend’s Cleveland Orchestra concerts led by music director Franz Welser-Möst.

First, a personal note: I was returning from a quick trip to Florida yesterday and landed in Cleveland a mere three and a half hours before the concert.  I collected my luggage, raced home, had dinner, and headed to Severance Hall in time for the pre-concert lecture.  What I had not anticipated was that, despite wearing my noise-cancelling Air Pods during the flights, my tinnitus was aggravated by the plane ride.  Accordingly, I had some difficulty hearing high frequencies during the concert.  I was also quite tired.  Fortunately, the concert was made available via the Adella app and I was able to watch again in the morning before writing this review. 

The concert began with one of my favorite symphonies: Mozart’s Symphony No. 41 in C major, K. 551 – the so-called “Jupiter.”  The nickname likely originates with the work’s first publisher, who probably appended it to add to the sales appeal for the work’s first publication a few years after Mozart’s death.  The composer created this work, his last symphony, in a mere 16 days.  It was one of several works composed for a concert in 1788 which apparently never took place, and it appears the work was never performed in Mozart’s lifetime.  The work has a propulsive quality that anticipates what Beethoven would achieve early in the following century.  Welser-Möst’s approach balanced this propulsiveness with Viennese elegance, favoring transparent textures and tempos that were on the fast side, particularly in the work’s second movement.  Welser-Möst injected some humor into the Menuetto’s trio via some naughty rubato – maybe as a reminder that Mozart liked to imbibe. 

Dmitri Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 11 in G minor, Op. 103 – titled “The Year 1905” by the composer, could hardly be more different than Mozart’s.  About the only thing the two works have in common is that they both have four movements – but even this similarity is deceptive as Mozart’s are distinctive while Shostakovich’s are interconnected.  The latter composer’s work is double the length of Mozart’s, uses a much larger orchestra, ends tragically, and commemorates an event: the  Russian Revolution of 1905, which began with the massacre by Tsar Nicholas II’s guards against workers who were delivering a petition protesting working conditions.  Further protests and strikes followed, capped by a mutiny on the Battleship Potemkin, which forced the Tsar to grudgingly accept some reforms which instituted a Constitutional monarchy.  The reforms were watered down over the next twelve years, which led to the 1917 Revolution which gave the world the Soviet Union – a new form of totalitarianism.

As for the Symphony itself, I first became familiar with the work’s opening during Carl Sagan’s 1980 series, Cosmos, and later the soundtrack LP from the series.  The world premiere recording by Stokowski was featured and I eventually bought the complete performance, which imprinted itself in my mind as how the work went.  In retrospect, as the work was new, neither Stokowski nor the Houston Symphony Orchestra had fully assimilated it, and as gorgeous as the 1958 sound was for the time, the interpretation as a whole was sectionalized.  Welser-Möst brought a much more direct, cohesive approach to the sprawling work.  The opening, set on the Square of the Tsar’s Winter Palace, was atmospheric without being blurry, with chaste horn and trumpet solos from Nathaniel Silberschlag and Michael Sachs.   Throughout the movement, Welser-Möst kept the dynamics muted, which made the crescendos of the second movement all the more startling.  This movement, which depicts the brutal massacre of the 9^th of January, was brilliantly brought off; seldom have I heard the climax presented with such controlled, mechanistic violence.  The third movement, titled Eternal Memory, was given a restrained performance, which is unusual in Shostakovich interpretation; but it worked and set the stage for the devastating finale.

Though this symphony was completed in the Soviet Union of 1957, and the orchestra planned for this program months in advance, my mind still made a connection to the events in this country over the past year – particularly the recent murder of a Minneapolis woman at the hands of an ICE officer this past week.  In Lee County Florida, a Donald Trump stronghold, I saw an anti-ICE protest on my way to the airport, and there were larger protests all over the country.  It seems that after the events of the last few months – the increasingly disturbing revelations of the Epstein report; the US intervention in Venezuela, which is entirely about oil; Trump’s threats against Greenland; and the continued oppression of US citizens – that the American people are finally awakening to the growing danger from within.