Shostakovich and Schubert at Severance

Guest conductor Santtu-Matias Rouvali, less than a year after a summer appearance here, returned to Severance Hall this weekend to lead the Cleveland Orchestra in contrasting works by Shostakovich and Schubert. 

Rouvali was joined by cellist Sol Gabetta for the concert’s opening work, Shostakovich’s Cello Concerto No. 2, Op. 126.  Although I know the composers more popular First Cello Concerto well, I was unfamiliar with this work until tonight’s concert.  Fortunately, I was joined by a cellist friend of mine who filled me in on the work’s structure and technical details.  One hears in the concerto’s opening movement the extreme turmoil that burdened Shostakovich as he had to balance his own desire for artistic expression with the practical necessity of avoiding running afoul of the Soviet music bureaucracy. The work has numerous arresting touches, including some inventive orchestration and a parody of a popular Russian song from the 1920s (Kupite bubliki/Buy bagels).  Gabetta conveyed every mood, including the sense of conflict between the soloist and orchestra – doubtless a reflection of the composer’s own conflicts.  Her performance was rapturously received, and she performed a fascinating encore which was a musical dialogue between herself and the orchestra’s percussionist, Mark Damoulakis. 

 

Following intermission Rouvali returned to lead a work that could hardly be more different from the Shostakovich: Schubert’s Symphony No. 9 in C major, D. 944.  This is one of my five favorite symphonies and one of the first I heard in its entirely thanks to a cassette tape my father gave to me when I was about thirteen (the Cleveland/Szell recording on Columbia).  Rouvali’s performance was close to ideal, with a conception that was thought out but not micromanaged, with tempi that were never dragged, with playing that was polished but not prissy, and the whole stripped of the phony Gemütlichkeit which has marred too many performances of this work.  Thankfully, Rouvali skipped the optional repeats except for the trio of the third movement.  The melodies floated over the accompaniment in a way that was, well, Schubertian.  The finale positively swung.  One could take issue with the exaggerated ritard the conductor introduced in the coda of the first movement (somewhat traditional in some circles but unspecified in the score) but this was a minor quibble.  This was a life-affirming “Great” C major, not proto-Mahler.