Cellist Gautier Capuçon (photograph by Anoush Abrar, courtesy of the San Francisco Symphony)
Last night saw the returns of two major visitors to the San Francisco Symphony in Davies Symphony Hall. Music Director Laureate Michael Tilson Thomas (MTT) launched his second pair of programs for this and next week, and his concerto soloist was French cellist Gautier Capuçon. For this occasion MTT prepared an all-Russian program, coupling a concerto by Dmitri Shostakovich with a symphony by Sergei Prokofiev.
By the end of his life, Shostakovich had composed three pairs of concertos, although it is clear that he did not conceive any of these as pairings in the strict sense of the word. In the chronological order, there is an alternating between piano concertos and violin concertos. However, between the second concertos for piano and violin, he composed the two cello concertos, both of which were written for Mstislav Rostropovich. However, these were separated by more than half a decade. The first, Opus 107 in E-flat major, was completed in 1959; but Opus 126 in G major was not completed until 1966.
Capuçon prepared Opus 126 for this week’s program. This counts as a “late work,” and the overall structure is daringly adventurous. This is another Shostakovich composition that begins with an extended slow movement and only gradually picks up the pace with two Allegretto movements, the first shooting by like lightning (usually less than five minutes in duration) and the second on the same quarter-hour time scale as the opening Largo. Taken as a whole, the concerto is a wild ride through a funhouse filled with contrasting dispositions, suggesting, possibly, that the composer had finally gotten beyond being haunted by the ghost of Joseph Stalin.
MTT clearly had thoroughly internalized every twist and turn of that wild ride, while Capuçon jumped through every hoop that Shostakovich had placed in his path with what may best be described as graceful energy. The overall instrumentation was rich; and, with apologies to P. D. Q. Bach, the ensemble involved “an awful lot of winds and percussion.” More often than not, however, Shostakovich was going for a rich palette of sonorities, rather than an overall grand sound. Indeed, having recovered the sense of wit that he had enjoyed before his first run-in with Stalin, the orchestra side of this concerto is almost a romp through different combinations of instrumental sonorities.
While most cellists tend to prefer Opus 107 when playing a Shostakovich concerto, both Capuçon and MTT made it clear that Opus 126 serves up one hell of a listening experience and merits far more than the occasional encounter.
Presumably, MTT put the better part of his effort into preparing the performance of this concerto. This is because the remainder of the program, Prokofiev’s Opus 100 (fifth) symphony in B-flat major, never came close to rising to the same height. This is another awful-lot-of-instruments composition; and, more often than not, it seemed as if MTT had given little attention to any passage with a dynamic level of less than fortissimo. Mind you, we have every reason to believe that the composer intended this as an expression of intense emotions; but intensity often has its greatest impact when the dynamic levels descend. In MTT’s reading of Opus 100, those descents were few and far between; and any significant sense of expressiveness rarely surfaced.
Beyond the popularity of the first symphony (Opus 25, “Classical,” in D major), Opus 100 tends to be the favored choice of Prokofiev’s “serious” symphonies. In spite of what is almost “mass appeal,” I have always felt that the most expressive of his symphonies was his last (the seventh), Opus 131 in C-sharp minor, with its clever nod to Ludwig van Beethoven’s coupling of opus number and key. Yes, this is a dark composition, haunted by shadows of a steady pulse, sounding, for all the world, like a ticking clock marking the seconds before death comes to the composer. Perhaps I prefer Opus 131 to Opus 100 because it challenges the performers to avoid overstatement. Sadly, MTT often lapses into indulging in overstatement; and Opus 100 gave him the resources he needed to exercise that indulgence.
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