Germany Auerbach, Shostakovich: Soloists and Gewandhauschor, Gewandhausorchestra / Alan Gilbert (conductor). Grosser Saal of the Leipzig Gewandhaus, 11.1.2024. (GT)
Lera Auerbach – Symphony No.6 ‘Lichtgefässe’ (Vessels of Gentle)
Shostakovich – Symphony No.10 in E minor, Op.93
Soloists – Kristina Reiko Cooper (cello), Johanna Ihrig (soprano), Nora Steuerwald (alto), Falk Hoffmann (tenor), Steven Klose (bass), Eliana Pliskin Jacobs, Sasha Lurje, Daniel Kahn, Karsten Troyke (audio system)
The Russian-born Lera Auerbach musician, painter and author has developed a serious profession together with her compositions carried out by main orchestras and musicians. She embraces completely different developments in world music, typically utilizing folks and jazz influences and continues to evolve her type of composition. This piece for cello, blended refrain, singers, whisperers and orchestra dates from 2022 and was initially the concept of the Israeli musician Kristina Reiko Cooper, who needed to fee a bit based mostly on the Holocaust and was supported by UCLA. The symphony (Vessels of Gentle) relies on a libretto by Auerbach, utilizing texts from the World Holocaust Centre and the American Society of Yad Vashem. There are 5 actions with a prologue and epilogue.
The music opened on tapes and whispering within the darkened corridor and as mild returned the solo cello opened with a melancholy theme, which was repeated all through the 45-minute efficiency. The cello soloist Kristina Reiko Cooper was looking out in her solo passages – evincing all of the humanity of Auerbach’s rating – her half was virtually like a concerto soloist accompanied by the orchestra and choir.
Essentially the most hanging particular person efficiency was by the soprano Johanna Ihrig, whose singing in Yiddish within the nice opening motion ‘Scherben und Flüstern’ was tremendously shifting with a voice ranging to the best notes and he or she was finely supported within the different singing in Yiddish, particularly by Falk Hoffmann and Steven Klose. The actions included texts from Psalm 121, a portrayal in music of painter Malevich’s Black Sq., and writings from Jewish poets Dovid Hofshteyn, Perets Markish, Avrom Sutzkever, Simkha-Bunim Shayevitch, Yisroel Emyot, Reyzl Zhikhlinski and Itzik Manger.
Alan Gilbert held the work collectively masterfully and carried this tragic message all through this heart-rending symphony, closing lastly within the enlightening epilogue ‘Wunder’, permitting brightness to shine by way of after the agonies of the Holocaust. The work proved an acceptable opener to this night of symphonies dedicated to the tragedies of mankind – each of which provide hope.
The efficiency of Shostakovich’s Tenth Symphony was a preamble to subsequent 12 months’s celebration of the composer within the Shostakovich Competition in Could/June 2025 on the Gewandhaus. Each two years, this exceptional orchestra celebrates the works of a single composer; in previous years, it has been Mahler, Wagner, and Beethoven joined by a few of the world’s best orchestras visiting along with chamber ensembles and soloists. Auerbach’s ‘Vessels of Gentle’, set the tone effectively in its darkly atmospheric and tragic undertones.
The Tenth is usually thought to be Shostakovich’s biggest masterpiece and hinted at a brand new section in life. With no programme, the Tenth displays the postwar years and the nation’s rebuilding and restoration from the devastation of the struggle years. That the composer had not written a symphony since 1945 reveals the depth of feeling embodied within the work’s composition. The primary motion (Moderato) opened on the low strings with nice focus – as if on a journey of enlightenment and battle. The uniformity of the violin enjoying was enhanced with monumental gravitas by the cellos and double basses.
Shostakovich – in his best works – provides the woodwind elegant expression – typically sounding like voices from the previous – of misplaced mates and people nonetheless alive and the clarinet theme from Bettina Aust was terribly delicate in its humanity and braveness. The American conductor Gilbert rigorously drew out each nuance by coaxing his musicians to evince all of the spirit of the music. Because the clarinet theme was repeated by way of the orchestra, one sensed the gradual however inevitable improvement in direction of a large fruits because the themes grew to become intertwined and extra highly effective. But, on the closing bars of this extended motion, the musical sequence grew to become muted in a extra passive and considerate passage on the piccolo.
The transitory scherzo (Allegro) was a tour de drive in its sensible, thrilling sequences performed at a tremendously livid tempo, with the brass group bursting forth along with the percussion as if in explosions of anger. The opening of the third motion (Allegretto) was rhythmically ambiguous with the eloquent theme heard on the violins adopted by the introduction of the fascinating motif of the composer’s signature on the violins D/E-flat/C/B. This led to the solitary, pensive thought on the solo horn of Ralf Götz, earlier than there was a shift within the rigidity heard on the strings and repeated eleven instances earlier than the passage closed mysteriously with the flute of Katalin Stefula and the piccolos.
The finale (Andante-Allegro) opened meditatively within the cellos and violas with a woodwind thought which grew to become more and more hanging and as soon as extra there was some delightfully engaging enjoying revealing the virtuosity of Aust on the clarinet, Henrik Wahlgren’s oboe, Susanne Wettemann’s cor anglais, and David Petersen’s bassoon. This heralded a extra cheerful, buoyant thought taken up by the entire orchestra at an elevated tempo earlier than ending on the ‘DSCH’ motif on the horn and timpani bringing this masterly symphony to a detailed.
This was a terrific live performance of two fairly completely different symphonic works – each by Russian composers sharing related expressions of their homeland’s tragic and superb previous and providing a prodigious trace of the Shostakovich Competition to be hosted by the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra in 2025.
Gregor Tassie
