SA Symphony, Lang-Lessing, Zilberstein
The dark side of 'Power to the people'
January 29, 2011The San Antonio Symphony and music director Sebastian Lang-Lessing trod familiar ground in their Jan. 28 concert, but with a degree of craft and attention to detail that made all the music fresh.
The most important Soviet-era Russian composers contributed the major works -- Dmitri Shostakovich’s riveting Symphony No. 5 and Sergei Prokofiev’s scintillating Piano Concerto No. 3, with Lilya Zilberstein the superb soloist.
The overture to Richard Wagner’s early opera “Rienzi” was a convenient choice to open the concert -- it’s the right length, and Lang-Lessing knew it well, having conducted a Deutsche Oper Berlin production of the drama last year.
But Wagner’s overture also provided a kind of thematic complement to the Shostakovich. “Rienzi” is based loosely on the life of a 14th-century Roman populist leader who, like most populist leaders, turned out to be not quite what the people had in mind. Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony is widely regarded as that composer’s highly personal response to the brutal, anti-intellectual dictatorship of another populist, Josef Stalin. (Meanwhile, up the road a piece, Adolf Hitler also portrayed himself as a benevolent man of the people. “Rienzi” was his favorite opera, and at the end of World War II he probably took a manuscript copy of the score with him to the bunker where he would be killed.)
Mr. Lang-Lessing is proving to be a master of tempo and tempo relations, which are especially important in the Shostakovich symphony. The big accelerandi in the first and last movements were precisely gauged to suggest not only increasing speed but an inexorable rush into terror. The conductor’s dynamics were equally impressive: A long crescendo near the beginning of the mournful third movement was beautifully controlled, and beautifully played by the strings. Mr. Lang-Lessing got the maximum of savagery from the stomping dance of the second movement, which also was notable for concertmaster Ertan Torgul’s witty, hypersweet violin solo. As we've come to expect from Mr. Lang-Lessing, he brought a seamless sense of structure to the music.
Outstanding solo work abounded, especially from the woodwinds. (Special notice goes to the whole clarinet section -- principal Ilya Shterenberg, Stepanie Key on E-flat clarinet, Rodney Wollam on bass clarinet.) The violins were seated antiphonally (the firsts on the conductor’s left, the seconds on his right), clarifying some of the textures and also allowing the violas (placed where the second violins usually sit) to project better and improve the overall balance.
When Mr. Lang-Lessing made his debut as a guest conductor with this orchestra, in 2009, he opened with a deeply considered and finely crafted account of the Prelude and “Liebestod” from Wagner’s “Tristan und Isolde.” The “Rienzi” overture is not music of the same class -- Wagner himself didn’t much care for it in his later years -- but Mr. Lang-Lessing devoted great care to it. The lyrical passages were lovingly shaped and glowingly played, and the conductor somehow managed to mitigate the vulgarity of the martial sections.
Ms. Zilberstein has appeared twice before with this orchestra under Larry Rachleff, both times giving astonishing performances of music by Sergei Rachmaninoff (the Piano Concerto No. 2 in 2001, the Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini in 2007.
In Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 3, we again heard Ms. Zilberstein's rip-roaring power, her luxurious but muscular touch, her incisive rhythm, her lightning speed and effortless fluidity in pyrotechnic passages. In the outer allegros, she played with an angularity and zest that sharpened the music’s wit, and she brought a jazz-like flexibility to the andantino. It was a performance with personality -- uninhibited, sophisticated and great fun.
Mike
Greenberg
