SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL

Twenty years after conductor Valery Gergiev made a sensational U.S. debut in San Francisco conducting Prokofiev’s War and Peace for San Francisco Opera, he brought his home Mariinsky Orchestra through on tour this week. I caught the second of two performances Monday night in Davies Hall, marked by a brilliant and compelling performance of the Shostakovich Symphony No. 15.

 

The rest of the concert produced puzzling results—not that they were bad but just did not quite reach an ignition point.

 

Having just performed Berlioz’s Les Troyens in concert in New York a few days earlier, the opening piece, the “Royal Hunt and Storm” from that opera, should have shown more focus and articulation than it did. This is, after all, an opera orchestra, the one in the house that used to be called Kirov and has recently returned to its original name. The reading came off as dutiful, and not all the notes were quite where they should have been, and in this case it wasn’t just the busy French horns that were to blame. String articulations and intonation throughout was off.

 

Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3, which followed, contrasted colorful work by the soloist, Denis Matsuev, with calm, dutiful playing throughout most of it by Gergiev and the orchestra. Matsuev unfurled the opening quiet octaves with crystalline limpidity, creating a nice tension against the thrum of the orchestra with the smallest touches of rubato. Problems arose, however, when he went for it later on the big moments. The clarity evaporated and there seemed to be no unanimity among the orchestra, conductor and soloist on exactly how the rhythms should be played. The slow movement dragged, and the finale lurched from one climax to the next until the final page, when it all came together at last in an exhilarating rush (which of course brought the audience to its feet). That left me wondering where the concentration and sustained effort had been earlier.

 

Those who may have been frustrated by these two pieces were rewarded for sticking around after intermission by the Shostakovich symphony. It was as if a new orchestra had replaced the one that muddled through the first half. This one played with purpose and drive, the strings making rich, burnished sounds, the winds creating shifting colors, the percussion tinkling, popping and cracking with precision.

 

The Symphony No. 15 finds the composer at his cheekiest, misquoting the William Tell Overture in the first movement and summoning sonorous brass chords from Wagner’s Ring of the Nibelungen (complete with pulsating timpani) to introduce the finale. Gergiev seemed content to let the music speak for itself, imposing no extra personal, glosses.

 

Shostakovich is typically ambiguous throughout this work. The satire in it is more of a wink than the poke in the ribs of many of his earlier symphonies. It makes extensive use of percussion, often letting the glockenspiel and celesta carry the ball, using the xylophone rather quietly, even weaving a jazzy vibraphone into the texture in the slow movement. The thumps of the bass drum are usually more delicate than the pounding the instrument gets in, say, the fifth or 11th symphonies. In the last two minutes of the finale, the phalanx of seven Russian percussionists created magic with the mini-concerto for their instruments that takes place quietly over a sustained open fifth in the strings.

 

The orchestra’s principal trumpet, principal trombone and flute distinguished themselves with deft playing in their moments in the spotlight, and the entire brass section made marvelous sonorities of both the Rossini and Wagner references.

 

For an encore, Gergiev drove the orchestra through the showy Baba Yaga by Anatoly Liadov. Another Liadov work, the charming Musical Snuff Box, was much more effective as an encore for Matsuev after the bombastic finish of the concerto. The shimmery jingle of the clockwork music nicely foreshadowed the percussion of the symphony to come.

 

If only the whole concert had been so well played.

 

Harvey Steiman