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Insights from Music Director Christopher Wilkins: Russian Masters

This program might have been called “The Resurrection Concert.”  Both Rachmaninoff and Shostakovich were rehabilitated by the works represented here.  In each case the musical journey gives a strong sense of the composer’s personal journey as well. Rachmaninoff’s depressed psychological state was restored to health by the process of writing his 2nd Piano Concerto, while it is not too much to say that the 5th Symphony saved Shostakovich’s life.

Today it is completely impossible for us to imagine the pressure Shostakovich was under in 1936. His opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk had been savagely attacked in the official Soviet newspaper as pornographic, incomprehensible, and morally corrupt. The work had given offense to Stalin himself, and Shostakovich had legitimate reason to fear that he would soon join the list of those taken away and executed by Stalin’s regime, a list that we now know eventually grew to 20 million names.

Facing the possibility of exile, personal ruin, or worse, Shostakovich set out to compose a work that would restore his reputation and his self-worth.  It did both.  While the symphony expresses many moods – not the least of which are loneliness and despair – it has a brilliant ending that was readily interpreted by the authorities as an exuberant celebration of the Soviet state.

For more on the narrative of the Shostakovich 5th Symphony, and for clues on how to decode its musical messages  – especially its famous and controversial ending – come to the pre-concert lecture at 7:00  pm in the Rehearsal Hall  behind Stage Left. (The Pre-concert Conversation is free to all ticket holders.)

William Wolfram, pianist

How excited I am to have the great American pianist William Wolfram with us.  Bill possesses one of the most daunting technical gifts of any American pianist, but he puts that technique to use in the most concentrated, focused and unfussy manner.

Rachmaninoff ‘s creative breakthrough with the 2nd Piano Concerto led him to the most productive period of his life, giving rise to the works that won him the greatest fame.  Virtuosity, spontaneity, tunefulness, and sure-footed showmanship all had a place in his new style.  So did a surging, emotionally charged eloquence reminiscent of Tchaikovsky, whom he had known since childhood.

Nothing contradicts better the charge that Rachmaninoff wrote indulgent, sentimental, or saccharine music than listening to recordings of the composer playing his own music. I am certain Rachmaninoff would have felt a kinship with William Wolfram’s pianism.

See you at the Carr!
Christopher Wilkins

Click Here to view YouTube video of  William Wolfram performing an excerpt from Liszt’s transcription of Bellini’s opera “Norma,” while recording for NAXOS records.

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