| SYMPHONY REVIEW Ferocious May 19, 2002
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 By Jeff Dunn
There was no room for the meek in Walnut Creek's Hoffman Theater when the California Symphony concluded its 15th anniversary season. The world premiere of Pierre Jalbert's Kinetic Voices sounded like dinosaurs duking it out, Kyoko Takezawa proved that Sibelius' violin concerto is best interpreted as a life-and-death struggle, and conductor Barry Jekowskyde-Clark-Kented the 10th symphony of the bespectacled Shostakovich for its mortal battle with arch enemy Stalin.
Pierre Jalbert has just completed a stint as Young American Composer-in-residence with the California Symphony, an enviable appointment that enabled him to prepare three works over three years with the opportunity for hearing them rehearsed by the orchestra at intermediate stages of composition. Kinetic Voices, completed this year, was described by Jalbert as "inspired by envisioning the microscopic world where energeticparticles are constantly in motion." As the composer informed the audience on the stage — kindly presenting the audience with previews of highlights — the 10-minute work starts off "subdued," building up to a "lyrical" melody before "letting go" into "faster, more aggressive music." Jalbert may be thinking microscopically but the work grew Cretaceously macroscopic, withsaurian bodies bashing and scales flying — a cinematic chase sequence well worthy of the vociferous applause it received.
Violinist Takezawa is not merely an artist of stature. Through a miracle ofcommitment to an interpretation, she turned a repertoire standard intoa revelation through stature itself. She was a crouching tiger, not-at-all-hidden dragon lady of a performer, wringing her instrument with an accompanying severity of grimace that seemed to grip the music by thethroat. Her stunning ice-blue chiffon dress with a sparkling, almostbreastplate-like metallic bodice revealed a formidable musculature that subdued all technical difficulties. More than many 20th-century concertos, the Sibelius has lots of alternation between unaccompanied soloist and tutti passages without soloist. During these latter intervals Takezawa would sway back and forth like a boxer between rounds, impatient to sink her fingers into the next challenge. Her approachmight have seemed mannered in another work, but for the Sibelius it wrung unparalleled intensity from the music. Altogether and simply, an astounding performance — and a testament (although purists may object) to why concerts should be seen as well as heard. Some music directors would have moved on to something lighter like the GrandCanyon Suite after intermission. Instead, Jekowsky went after what program annotator Richard Rodda writes is "a large, bold symphony, a composition that was to prove the greatest [Shostakovich] had written to that time in the form — the Symphony No. 10." These words are music to my ears, since the 10th seems to have lost favor in recent years among commentators in comparison to the 8th, which still comes across to me after countless listenings as a lesser version of the 5th. Whatever others may say, Jekowsky's band made a strong argument validating Rodda's assertion with some first-class playing, especially in the woodwinds. The first isperhaps the most Brucknerian movement in Shostakovich. Taking up nearlyhalf the time of the symphony, it must be carefully sculpted as a grandiosearch. While Jekowsky did a credible job, his taking the movement slightlytoo fast and overemphasizing the first climax did not quite perfectly servethe form. However, his interpretation of the remaining movements wastop-notch, especially his blistering vision of the tour-de-force secondmovement.
As Rodda brings out by quoting from "Testimony," Shostakovich's purported memoirs, the symphony may be about Stalin and the Stalin years, with the second movement being "a musical portrait of Stalin, roughly speaking." Roughly, indeed, for the Stalin here is the lethal "whirlwind" referred to by the title of Eugenia Ginsberg's harrowing gulag narrative: frantic, sweeping all before it. Even the rhythm of his name "YO-sef STA-lin" permeates the movement. The third movement, by contrast, is indisputably about Shostakovich himself, with the DSCH code for his name running through it almost ad nauseam. Starting hesitantly, as if on tiptoe to avoid being crushed by the tyrant, the DSCH emerges victorious — although obnoxious. Whatever the extra-musical scenario, Jekowsky's interpretation of the work was an appropriate culmination of a no-holds-barred, ferociousset of musical experiences. The "Birthday" concert for the California Symphony succeeded in rewarding its patrons as well as showcasing its talent.
(Jeff Dunn is a freelance critic with a B.A. in music and a Ph.D. inGeologic Education. A composer of piano and vocal music, he is a member ofNACUSA and is a Bay Area correspondent for the journal 21st-Century Music.) ©2002 Jeff Dunn, all rights reserved |
