For the last several days thoughts have been rolling around my head about the concerts we attended last weekend, but nothing has been forthcoming in terms of coherent thought. The further I get from the event the more difficult this seems to become so I must put down something, pathetic though it may be.
Actually, we are listening to Shostakovitch’s Jazz Suite #1 as I write this and this has jogged my memory in that part of the weekend’s concert included Shostakovitch, although nothing as light-hearted as the Jazz Suite.
Friday night we had a rare "movie date" except that it was not just any movie date. We went in to NYC to Lincoln Center to hear the New York Philharmonic perform Alexander Nevsky live during a screening of Eisenstein’s 1938 of the same name. I have heard the music and I have seen the film, but I don’t think I have ever experienced the two together and it was a spectacular experience. The film is absolutely stunning, although obviously programmatic and at times dated. There were several parts where the audience laughed at the dated silliness of it, but overall it was quite good. The music meshed with the film beautifully and was very lushly performed. The music could be comedic and bumbling during the antics of the two suitors for a young maiden’s hand in matrimony, noble and filled with the glory of war and victory, and also dark and brooding, especially during the terrifying scene where the German invaders nonchalantly drop crying infants into the fire. Prokofiev was a great composer, Eisenstein, one of the great filmmakers and this film is a masterpiece, but together the two of them created something far greater than either of the pieces individually, and that is a tremendous achievement.
Saturday night we attended another concert. Luckily this one was nearby, in Rhinebeck. The Cavani Quartet played at the Rhinebeck Chamber Music Society and it was a truly spectacular concert. The quartet opened with Mozart’s Divertimento #3 in F major, K 138, which was light, charming and playful, the perfect opening to a concert which was soon to take a turn of another sort altogether.
The second piece was Shostakovitch’s String Quartet #8 in C minor Op.110 and it was a truly spectacular performance. The opening was soft lush and cushioning. But then the horror of war burst around us with the furious, staccato, harsh second movement. The listener was truly jerked out of repose with horror, forced to sit on the edge of one’s seat. The tension and fury were completely palpable. During the demented waltz, one felt that kind of existence that one carries on in the face of disaster, the mask of normalcy, hiding the terror and chaos that exist just below the surface, and the sounds of war once again interrupted. The work is intensely emotional and gripping and the quartet played on this emotional outburst to great affect. I think no one in the audience was unmoved.
I haven’t been able to help but contrast the two works in my mind since the weekend, the Prokofiev and the Shostakovitch. Both show horror in war, but the Prokofiev also celebrates the glory and national pride. Of course the Prokofiev was written for Stalin and meant to appeal to national pride. Still, both keep running through my mind.
Oh, and I do not want to forget, the concert closed with the Beethoven String Quartet # 14, powerful and tragic also in its own way, and in some ways probably one of the few pieces that could have followed the Shostakovich and held its own. The performance was quite magnificent and was roundly applauded and by the audience. My own quibble was perhaps small. The performance was profound, perhaps too profound, the musicians fell prey to the current trend toward ponderous Beethoven. Perhpas there was too much of a slowing of work, an overplaying of the tragedy without the contrapuntal lightness that is also present in Beethoven.
Just sayin’.