Karina Canellakis’ Shostakovich in Detroit

One of the high points in our foreshortened season of the San Francisco Symphony (SFS) came this past October with the debut of conductor Karina Canellakis. Indeed, I had no trouble “jumping the gun” on the significance of her visit when, at the end of the calendar year, I designated her visit to Davies Symphony Hall as the most memorable one to be given in the month of October. That recognition was due in no small part to the performance she had prepared of Dmitri Shostakovich’s Opus 60 (seventh) symphony, dedicated “To the City of Leningrad.” While many have dismissed this symphony as little more than militarist clichés, Canellakis brought genuine intensity to her reading of the score, reflecting not only the stress that the composer endured during the siege of Leningrad but also his insistent belief that there would be light at the end of the tunnel.

Shostakovich actually began work on this symphony in the wake of the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, but his frame of mind shifted with the onset of the siege on September 8, 1941. The symphony was completed in December, but the siege would continue until January 17, 1944. Thus, the final movement of Opus 60 is an envisaged future that would not be realized for several years.

In this context I was intrigued that the DSO (Detroit Symphony Orchestra) Replay Web site included a performance of Canellakis conducting Shostakovich’s following symphony, the Opus 65 (eighth) in C minor on January 27, 2019. This one was written in the summer of 1943, and the end of the siege was far from in sight. Indeed, conditions were so trying that Shostakovich had pretty much lost the ability for any sort of a positive rhetorical stance. As a result, his friend Isaak Glikman described Opus 65 as the composer’s “most tragic work.” There are few that would disagree with this assessment. Ironically, SFS had given three performances of Opus 65 in its preceding season, chosen for the program at the end of May of 2019 by visiting conductor Juraj Valčuha.

Karina Canellakis conveying the intensity of Shostakovich’s Opus 65 symphony (screen shot from the video being discussed)

To call a performance of Opus 65 “satisfying” suggests that one has missed the point of the composer’s intentions. Canellakis clearly understood the many devices through which Shostakovich expressed in music that the ongoing siege of Leningrad had brought him to the end of his rope. Indeed, it is almost difficult to applaud after the final gasp the the fifth movement; but there was clearly a need to break the tension that Canellakis had established in her interpretation. Applause was the best way to come down to earth, although many would have heaved an enormous sigh of relief prior to acknowledging just how perceptive and compelling the performance had been.

I suspect that there will be some that will try to recast the emotions of Opus 65 in the current global context. Personally, I feel that a reality check is in order. Leningrad had been under siege for a little less than two years. We are now in a period of restricted movement and interaction that has not lasted even two months. When we reflect on dark times in the past, we should give those times due respect; but any attempt to view those times as a context for the present would be short-sighted, to say the least.