For her New York Philharmonic debut, Keri-Lynn Wilson, founder of the Ukrainian Freedom Orchestra, led an all-Russian program, Shostakovich’s Symphony No.10 in conjunction with William Kentridge’s Oh to Believe in Another World,surveying the composer’s rocky relationship with Soviet authorities. The opener, a rousing rendition of the Festive Overture, showed a brighter side of his complex personality, written quickly in 1954 to celebrate the 37th anniversary of the October Revolution. Highlights, enhanced by Wilson’s very brisk tempo, were the opening brass fanfare and the thrilling coda.
Next came concertmaster Frank Huang in an earnest performance of Prokofiev’s Second Violin Concerto. His most heartfelt playing came in the central Andante, opening tenderly over graceful pizzicatos and played with warm tones. His frantic version of the Finale – scored with castanets in keeping with the work’s 1935 premiere in Madrid – was most impressive in the fiery, wide-ranging closing passages accompanied by ominous steady beats on the bass drum.
The second half included a splendid performance of Shostakovich Ten. Kentridge’s 2022 film, commissioned by the Lucerne Symphony Orchestra, was designed as a visual counterpoint to the Symphony which premiered in Leningrad in 1953, the year of Stalin’s death, and is sometimes interpreted as an expression of the composer’s personal triumph over the dictator’s dehumanizing regime. Set inside a miniature set representing an abandoned museum, the action covers four decades of Soviet history played out in a dream world where the protagonists – Shostakovich, Stalin, Lenin, Trotsky and others – are depicted as puppets or by actors wearing photo-face masks and dancing fitfully about. Throughout, slogans from the Revolution (‘We will drive you into happiness with an iron fist’) are projected, and while the film itself has much to recommend it – ingenious use of puppetry, collage, sculpture and animation – Shostakovich’s music needs no visual add-ons, Kentridge’s repetitions visual narrative were ultimately more distracting than enriching.
Despite this, Wilson and the Philharmonic managed to deliver a spellbinding reading of the score. The long span of the opening movement, played at an ideal Moderato tempo, conveying an unremittingly bleak atmosphere, steadily building to a blazingly dramatic climax before closing with heart-rending piccolo sounds. The demonic second movement, often viewed as a caricature of Stalin, was as brutal as it was brief. In the Allegretto, Wilson elicited great delicacy from players, with the strings producing exceptional beauty of tone, the woodwinds, especially Judith LeClair’s bassoon, marked by a gentle wistfulness. The mercurial Finale, begun with a sense of profound melancholy, gradually became lighter and more joyful before turning darker again, then moving on to a triumphant coda, the Philharmonic with Wilson all the way.
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