REVIEW: Sights and Sounds of Stalin at NY Phil

Dec 8

Dec 8 REVIEW: Sights and Sounds of Stalin at NY Phil

Above photo by Chris Lee.

December 5, 2024

Dmitri Shostakovich’s Tenth Symphony — a towering journey from darkness and despair to optimism, and a powerful chronicle of toiling under Stalin’s Soviet regime — was the focus of the New York Philharmonic’s impressive turn under the baton of Keri-Lynn Wilson, in her splendid debut with the orchestra. In a programming coup de théâtre, the challenging hour-long symphony completed in 1953 was accompanied by an imaginative film, Oh To Believe in Another World, by renowned South African opera director William Kentridge.

Like an insightfully curated art exhibition, the concert contemplated history from the perspective of artists, framing the story of Stalinist Russia with different points of view. The opener was Shostakovich’s Festive Overture, Op. 96, a rousing, celebratory work tossed off in slapdash fashion to commemorate the anniversary of the October Revolution in 1954 — after Stalin’s death. Wilson was electric, bounding to the podium and launching the Philharmonic into the zippy, effervescent overture, which they relished with aplomb, skillfully at each other’s feet in racing, antic woodwind runs and unabating off-beats in the horns and strings.

Shifting gears, Philharmonic concertmaster Frank Huang took the stage as soloist for a hearty, full-throated account of Sergei Prokofiev’s Violin Concerto No. 2 in G Minor, Op. 36. Savoring the familiar camaraderie of his section violins, committing heart and humor to Prokofiev’s probing odyssey, Huang proved his mettle in this tricky concerto from 1936. Prokofiev had escaped to the West during the Bolshevik revolution, and this work serves as a coda to those years abroad, and a transition to his return to the motherland, where he would grapple, like his colleague Shostakovich, with Stalin’s tyranny. The first movement was drawn in long, thick lines; the second movement shined with Huang’s gleaming upper register and healthy dialogue with various solo winds; and the finale was a flamenco-infused adventure, and a showcase for delicate percussion.

Finally, on to Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 10 in E Minor, Op. 93. Wilson, who conducted the entire concert from memory, led a riveting traversal. Kentridge’s film, first unveiled in 2022, was a cryptic series of fascinating images employing miniature sets fabricated from cardboard. The camera maneuvered through a museum-like space inhabited by puppets representing a cast of characters including Shostakovich, his student Elmira Nazirova, and various Soviet figures — the assassinated Leon Trotsky, Lenin, and Stalin.

With Mona Lisa-like grins, photos of the characters’ faces adorned the clumsily dancing puppets, furnishing an air of irony and wry indignation. Like a silent movie, bits of text interjected further context, mostly drawn from the writing of Vladimir Mayakovsky, Shostakovich’s close friend whose disillusioned suicide deeply affected the composer. Kentridge mined the symphony for emotional implications and translated it into color-rich imagery. Somehow choreographed to punctuate musical moments, it enriched the impact of Shostakovich’s four movement “optimistic tragedy,” as the Soviet authorities eventually described the work.

The epic first movement, Moderato, is an architectural test, and Wilson and the Philharmonic constructed an edifice of steely determination in the face of encroaching gloom. The frenetic second movement, Allegro, flew by as antic woodwinds whirled, and strings swirled as if caught up in a tempest. Woodwinds and strings appeared as struggling victims, the oppressed, and the stern brass and percussion as the oppressors.

In the third movement, Allegretto, melodic motifs representing the composer and Nazirova (Elmira’s theme announced by a clarion horn solo) conjure two contrasting sensibilities engaging musically, as their puppets engage on screen. There’s something hopeful and healing in the Elmira theme, commented upon in a delicious English horn and oboe duet.

As the strings take the mantle of yearning melody, and the brass wallops it with stern, insistent rhythm, Wilson shaped the intensifying tempo and volume with finesse. She gave the soloists just the right support and space to speak effortlessly. The movement unwound and dissipated into lumbering pizzicatos in the low strings and blinking flute and piccolo.

The epic fourth movement, Andante, buried the lede with a mysterious oboe solo, beckoning like a siren, that tapered into a flute solo, elemental like the wind, then a yearning bassoon solo, and suddenly burst into a full woodwind choir of building excitement. In the ensuing Allegro, Wilson’s tight ictus enabled the ensemble to etch a tight, crisp tempo, as the finale transformed into a victorious onslaught of sound. Shostakovich’s busy textures, balanced and delineated, proved a formidable showcase for the renovated Geffen Hall’s well-equalized acoustics.

The business on the screen, while compelling and carefully constructed, was almost too compelling — distracting from what was happening on the stage beneath: a masterfully paced, crackerjack conquest of one of the trickiest scores in the repertoire, surely one of the most thrilling performances the Philharmonic has given this season.