Weber, Mozart, and Shostakovich: Vassily Sinaisky, cond., Vadim Gluzman, violin, Seattle Symphony, Benaroya Hall, Seattle, 25.3.2007 (BJ)

 

For a guest conductor in Seattle to program a Shostakovich symphony might be thought the equivalent of carrying coals to Newcastle. In its music director, Gerard Schwarz, the Seattle Symphony possesses perhaps the finest Shostakovich conductor alive, and not merely in the Western hemisphere. But Vassily Sinaisky, one of the most talented and also one of the most intelligently sophisticated of the current rich crop of Russian maestros, braved the comparison with this performance of the Tenth Symphony, and acquitted himself remarkably well.

The orchestra sounded in fine fettle. With John Cerminaro on hand to give masterly voice to the third movement’s horn proclamations, by turns majestic and mysterious, that evocative Allegretto was played as superbly as I have ever had the pleasure of hearing it played. The vehement, threatening energy of the scherzo and the more equivocal vigor of the finale brought thrilling execution from the strings, while woodwind, brass, and percussion contributions throughout were polished and vividly expressive. Only in the first movement did I feel that Sinaisky’s reading lacked a touch of the sheer intensity and irresistible cohesion Schwarz brings to the composer’s broader structures. Nevertheless, in its more analytic way, this too was a valid and thoroughly absorbing interpretation. As with the skinning of cats, there are more ways than one to conduct any truly great music.

The program had begun with Weber’s Ruler of the Spirits overture. Under Sinaisky’s batonless but eloquent beat, the orchestra played it for all it is worth, which may not be saying very much, for it really is rather a silly piece. Mozart’s Fourth Violin Concerto is decidedly not a silly piece, but a listener previously unacquainted with it could have been forgiven on this occasion for not finding it a very rewarding one. Soloist Vadim Gluzman, born (in 1973) in Ukraine and trained largely in Israel, took the outer movements at such a clip as to drain all meaning from the music. (It should, incidentally, be understood that, though the conductor and orchestra start the proceedings in a classical concerto on their own, it is in the ordinary way the soloist that decides such matters as tempo.) The only respite came in the central Andante cantabile, where by contrast an agreeably flowing pulse was just what the composer ordered.

Gluzman can play the fiddle, no question. His tone is pleasantly pure and warm, and the fluency of his fingers was evidenced by a generous encore in the shape of the first movement of Ysaÿe’s Second Solo Sonata. But Mozart demands more than mere dexterity, and in the two quicker movements of the concerto only the neatly detailed textures Sinaisky elicited from the orchestra compensated for the superficiality of the soloist’s conception.

 

Bernard Jacobson

 

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