Notes from the 2025 Salzburg Festival ( 1 ) A Recital with Igor Levit filling in for Evgeny Kissin

Salzburg Festival • Recitals | D-S-C-H • ex-Kissin | Igor Levit

Whispered Brahms, Affectatious Shostakovich

Substituting for Evgeny Kissin is no picnic – even for Igor Levit. But at least he tried.

The solo recital with Evgeny Kissin, part of Salzburg’s “DSCH” series of concerts, had to go ahead without its planned soloist who had fallen ill on short notice. He was going to play the same program he gave in late March at the Musikverein. Shostakovich, who died exactly fifty years ago that week, at least, remained the focus of the second half, thanks to Igor Levit, who stepped in for his colleague and left that part similar enough. In fact, on paper, the Second Sonata was still the same piece. Musically, everything was fundamentally different, though – including said sonata.

D.Shostakovich Preludes & Fugues op.87 Igor Levit Sony (2021) US | UK | DE

D.Shostakovich Preludes & Fugues op.87 Keith Jarrett ECM (1992) US | UK | DE

The surge, seriousness, and underlying humor that Kissin had drawn out were blown away. In their place came playfulness, a murmur, a small-small in stubborn mezzopiano – here and there interrupted by an occasional furious, note-snatching dash across the keyboard. Musical incidents that each stood like a monolith amid the whispering. Energy, when it was present at all, was derived from speed, not mass. This worked quite nicely for the Preludes and Fugues from Opus 87, as did Levit’s inclination to dissolve the notes into architectural elements. Quirky, in the best sense; a little as if Gyro Gearloose had taken up the piano.

The Largo of the Sonata no longer stood, as with Kissin, in spiritual proximity to Debussy; it was pushed toward twelve-tone music and Schoenberg. “Pointillist,” one might say. Or “frayed.” The ostentatious renunciation of loudness – especially effective in the broad expanse of the Grosses Festspielhaus – was not without appeal. Levit’s delicate, soiree-appropriate soft, and even touch was consistently admirable – especially in the Brahms Intermezzi Op. 117 and Four Ballades Op. 10 of the first half. Brahms benefits from this, to a point – though the approach shifts the burden of generating tension from the performer to the audience: either it sits in raptness (which, in the restless first half, could hardly be claimed) or one faces a certain risk of the audience nodding off.

The question also arose whether there might be such a thing as “over-interpretation,” so much did Levit demand of every phrase in these simply beautiful Intermezzi; so introspective every attack had to become; so brooding every pause: every tiniest note a carefully curated miniature. The Ballades, too, received this detail-minded, intelligent treatment. Like pulled pork, it seemed: so tender it fell apart if you as much as looked at it – a tightrope walk between touching and tiresome. The contrast of the thunderous leap into the B minor Ballade, as rough-hewn as Michelangeli liked to play it, came out all the sharper in this setting. Sweetening the close was another Brahms Intermezzo as encore – holding back the already-breaking-out just once more, and making the already-jubilation-primed remainder of the audience cheer all the harder.


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#ClassicalDiscoveries: The Podcast. Episode 015 - Dmitri Shostakovich - The Symphonies

Welcome to #ClassicalDiscoveries. Here is a little introduction to who we are and what we would like to achive at the first (or rather "double-zeroëth" episode). Your comments, criticism, and suggestions remain most welcome, of whatever nature they may be. Now here’s Episode 015, where we return to Dmitri Shostakoivch, but now the symphonies, not the film music. We focus on a few favorites and Joe plays plenty of music to lighten the mood. :-)

The Kitajenko-Shostakovich

DSCH The Symphonies Gürzenich-Orchester Köln D.Kitajenko Capriccio, SACDs 2005

DSCH The Symphonies Gurzenich Orchestra Cologne D.Kitayenko Capriccio, CDs 2025

Critic’s Notebook: A Damp Squib with the Vienna Symphony

Also reviewed for Die Presse: Musikverein: Eine verpasste Chance mit den Wiener Symphonikern

D.Shostakovich, Violin Concerto Alina Ibragimova V.Jurowski / Russian State Academic SO hyperion

C.Debussy, La Mer (et al.) D.Gatti / ONdeFrance Sony

M.Ravel, La valse (et al.) S.Celibidache / MPhil MPhil Archive

Isabelle Faust’s Shostakovich could have been a major moment — but never got the support it needed

After a special evening at the with the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen (see review), it was back to meat-and-potatoes on Thursday. The ingredients sounded promising enough, for a concert with the Vienna Symphony in which Isabelle Faust would perform Shostakovich’s Second Violin Concerto. And she certainly wasn’t the problem: her contribution had the ears prick up, whether it was the plaintive, lamenting tone she drew from her instrument by way of strategically wide vibrato — penetrating and tender all at once — or her mercilessly instant, stone-faced gear-shift into an aggressively hard-edged sound. Even at moderate tempos, Faust managed to carry a good deal of precarious tension across from the Adagio of the second movement into the Adagio of the third. That wasn’t enough to save Shostakovich’s astringent late work, however.

And it’s not even that the VSO played badly. In fact, they played solidly enough, no major blunders, and conductor Alain Altinoglu at least seemed engaged and trying hard. But whether in the prelude to Khovanshchina (where the thin violin sound didn’t help), or in Debussy’s La Mer, the results were uniformly dull, the results were eye-wateringly boring: the sound was murky, the energy sluggish, the atmosphere in the hall unsettled. The orchestra sounded like it was on autopilot — as if this were just another rehearsal-free repertoire run-through over at the State Opera. Tremolos remained tremolos and never lifted off the strings, becoming a shimmering iridescence. Dynamic shadings felt merely mechanical. Any Fortissimo wasn’t majestic — just loud. Where mystery was called for, we got mezzo piano.

At least Ravel’s La Valse is more or less impossible to ruin. Here it stumbled along with the grace of a drunken elephant — which, after all, rather suits it. But the veil that had lowered between orchestra and audience — and somehow also between orchestra and conductor — never lifted again.


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Dip Your Ears: No. 281 (Top of the Shostakovich-15 Heap, Still!)

D.Shostakovich Symphony No.15 [42:38] Boris Tchaikovsky Theme & 8 Var. [18:12] Dresden StaKap, K.Kondrashin (Hänssler Profil, 2007)

Kondrashin in Dresden

“Profil – Edition Günter Hänssler” has been issuing more and more CDs from (old) German radio tapes that vie for a spot in the limelight of the mainstream. Especially some of the more recent performances of the Staatskapelle Dresden like Bernhard Haitink’s supreme Bruckner 6^th and a Mahler 9^th with Giuseppe Sinopoli are immensely impressive. This recording of Shostakovich’s 15^th Symphony with Kyrill Kondrashin, too, makes this list.

On January 23^rd, 1974 – just a little over a year before Shostakovich died – Kondrashin conducted his favorite German orchestra in a concert celebrating the 425^th anniversary of the orchestra, the 50^th anniversary of the renaming of St. Petersburg as Leningrad, and the 30^th anniversary of the break of the German siege of Leningrad.

The latest and last symphony of the great composer from St. Petersburg was a logical choice for this, but it wouldn’t have escaped Kondrashin, or the Dresden audience, that it is uniquely unsuited to venerate the Soviet—or any communist—regime. After vocal symphonies 13 and 14, Shostakovich, fatally ill and well aware of it, returned to an almost classical form of the symphony.

In the essay that accompanied the recording of Maxim Shostakovich (said to be the best performance of Shostakovich’s son on record – but to my knowledge not available on CD) Shostakovich spoke of the first movement Adagietto as a “toy-shop with plenty of knick-knacks and trinkets – absolutely cheerful”. No listener will get away from the first movement without doubting the composer’s own words. If it is a toy-shop at all, it’s one that sells little tanks, toy-guns, and junior’s first water boarding-kit. It’s a romp with its share of plink and delicate chirping, but this collection of trivialities amid intensity, with crashing marching bands and ballerinas, sounds like a sugarplum fairy-cum-guerilla fighter. There are moments that remind of the 2nd and 9th Symphony, and it’s always interrupted by the seemingly random William Tell overture excerpt that all American audiences can identify as the “Lone Ranger” theme.

It’s not impossible that Shostakovich knew the Lone Ranger and his heroic deeds (or his appeal to children, which would go with the toy-shop story) – but it’s more likely the Rossini original that inspired him. And that’s telling enough: A story about a man who is coerced to use his skill (archery, in Tell’s case) according to the bidding of a despot – who then uses that skill to fight against tyranny. If anything it seems that Shostakovich, in the hospital while composing this movement, had dispensed with being subtle in his political statements.

On ionarts: Shostakovich Symphony Cycle Survey

The strange giddiness of the first movement is immediately subdued by the grave brass chorale that opens the dark second movement. Phases of rest-and-answer and the cello’s lamenting song lead into trombone and violin statements that are everything but “absolutely cheerful”. Trombone glissandi (the ones that enraged Stalin in Lady Macbeth) are employed and eventually the subdued movement wakens and rises slowly to a big orchestral thrashing-about. It’s much like the Shostakovich from Symphonies 4, 7, 8, and 11 – but with an incredible efficiency of means, almost chamber-like in proportion and scoring.

The little, friendly third movement (Allegretto) has moments that are nearly Haydnesque before the fourth movement takes over with another blatant musical quotation – this time Wagner’s ‘ensuing death’ (or “fate”) motif from the Ring, already foreshadowed in the Adagio of the second movement. The yearning opening of Tristan & Isolde also appears several times, completing the atmosphere of resignation and departure. More difficult to hear, if you don’t know about them, are references or quotations of a Glinka song, twelve-tone rows (“bourgeois decadence!”), Strauss’ Heldenleben (the “adversaries” phrase, third movement), and many others that I will have missed completely. In this fourth, as in the second movement and in so many of his other symphonies, there is the gathering of momentum, the orchestral outbreak, the swoop up… here leading to a Passacaglia – and then the symphony dithers away in a morose mood over ghastly tic-tocs of a clock and a last, faint glimmer of percussive hope.

Especially the Wagner quotations, himself once Hofkapellmeister in Dresden, would not have escaped the sophisticated Dresden audience at this performance, the last together with Kondrashin. And what an extraordinary performance it is. It is better in every regards than Kondrashin’s earlier recording (Melodiya / Aulos): The playing is finer, indeed flawless. The sound, with a little artificial reverb, is excellent from the GDR’s radio-broadcast recording crew. Lasting about 42 minutes, the tempi are marginally more relaxed than in the Moscow recording, but still very much on the fast side which means that no moments are allowed to sag or lumber along. I have not heard the mythical first Maxim Shostakovich performance (and I'm not sure how many of those who sing its praises have, either), but among the interpretations I know (Barshai, Caetani, Haitink, Järvi/DG, Kitajenko, Kondrashin/Moscow (oop), Ormandy, and especially the favorite Sanderling/Cleveland), this one goes to the very top.

The Theme & Eight Variations by Boris Tchaikovsky (not related) was written for this concert and are heard in their world premiere. The work has only reinforced my curiosity about—and appreciation of—a composer that really belongs in a next edition of Surprised by Beauty.

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This review had been previously published on the long-nixed WETA 90.9 blog.

#ClassicalDiscoveries: The Podcast. Episode 013 - Dmitri Shostakovich: The Film Music Scores

Welcome to #ClassicalDiscoveries. Here is a little introduction to who we are and what we would like to achive at the first (or rather "double-zeroëth" episode). Your comments, criticism, and suggestions remain most welcome, of whatever nature they may be. Now here’s Episode 013, where we are talking about the cinematic side of Shostakovich.

DSCH Film Music

Dmitri Shostakovich Film Music Edition DSO Berlin, RSO Berlin M.Jurowski, J.Judd Capriccio, 2025

Dip Your Ears: No. 280 (DSCH, dogmatically pumped up)

D.Shostakovich 24 Preludes op.34, Chamber Sy. op.110a dogma chamber orchestra Mikhail Gurewitsch (CM) (M|DG SACD, 2013)

Shostakovich Strung Up

It’s rare enough to hear Shostakovich’s Twenty Four Preludes op.34 on disc (much less in recital). Much rarer still, but no less interesting, is it to hear the work—not to be mistaken for the increasingly popular 24 Preludes and Fugues, op. 87—set for string orchestra. The all-lower case dogma chamber orchestra took on the task and recorded Grigory Kochmar’s arrangement to marvelous, delightfully unsettling effect: A new angle on an unfamiliar work gives us de-facto brand new Shostakovich. Compared to that, the String Quartet No.8 in its souped-up version (basically a simpler version of Chamber Symphony op.110a), is familiar territory in which dogma faces and proudly meets the competition.

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Briefly Noted: Olga Kern and Dalí Quartet

Brahms / Shostakovich, Piano Quintets, Olga Kern, Dalí Quartet (released on March 1, 2022) Delos DE3587 | 71'56"

It is good to see that Olga Kern is recording again. For her first disc since 2012, she has teamed up with the Dalí Quartet in two monuments of the piano quintet repertoire. The tracks were captured in 2019 in Norfolk, under the auspices of the Virginia Arts Festival, for whom Kern serves as director of chamber music. The Brahms selection, the Piano Quintet in F Minor, is a monument of the chamber music repertoire, but this rendition is too brash and forceful to hit the mark. Brahms was careful to note that three of the four movements are not to be taken too fast. Kern and the Dalí Quartet give the Scherzo a blistering air of excitement but rush through the other three movements and miss the wistful qualities of the music.

The other selection, Shostakovich's Piano Quintet in G Minor, makes for much better listening and mostly for the same reasons. The Lento first movement bristles with searing intensity, from both Kern and the quartet. The strings-only sections of the second movement are lush and contained, with Kern's rumbling octaves adding an air of distant menace. This quintet's Scherzo, a happy-go-lucky romp with plucky melodies that turn a little maniacal, could not be more different from the one composed by Brahms. Yearning string lines sing sweetly in the Intermezzo, accompanied by soft pizzicati or pulsed piano chords. Kern's bold touch at the keyboard propels the finale, which subsides to an understated finish.

Shostakovich composed the Piano Quintet just before Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1940. Born and trained in Russia, Kern broke a year-long Twitter silence earlier this month to demand an end to the brutal Russian war in Ukraine. As she explained in her message, her grandfather was from Ukraine, and her family had a connection with Kharkov, one of many cities recently bombed. She also toured with the National Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine in 2019. Kern became an American citizen in 2016 and is now on the faculty of the Manhattan School of Music. Her son, Vladislav Kern, is also a pianist who graduated from Juilliard's pre-college program in 2016. Mother and son have even performed together in recent years.

Ten Recordings to Remember Mariss Jansons By

Photo of Mariss Jansons by Astrid Ackermann

Mariss Jansons died last month, on November 30th. His passing, at 76, comes earlier than we somehow would expect from a great conductor - since we tend to perceive great conductors bathed in a gentle glow of immortality. (And because conductors, despite exceptions, tend to live long and active lives.) But it did not come entirely unexpected, either, after his past and recent health failings and his preternaturally frail appearance. Between my first Mariss Jansons concert with Amsterdam's Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra at the Kennedy Center in 2006 (ionarts review) until my last review of a Jansons-concert (with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra at Munich's Gasteig) almost exactly ten years later (ionarts review here), he had been one of the conductors I had followed the most closely and heard the most often. I cannot say that I was always entirely enamored by the results, but often enough impressed and on some occasions blown away. Much the same goes for his recorded output which isn't very even but which contains much quality, some of which truly stands out. These are ten recordings that I think represent Jansons rather well and include the four bands with which he worked the most (Oslo, Pittsburgh, Amsterdam & Munich) the best. Failing that, they are those recordings I am most

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On ClassicsToday: LSO Shostakovich 8 Remake Succeeds With Noseda

LSO Shostakovich 8 Remake Succeeds With Noseda

by Jens F. Laurson

Snidely put, Gianandrea Noseda only conducts Italian and Russian works. (He’s musically and linguistically fluent in Russian after having lived and worked in St. Petersburg for years.) It’s a pretty limited repertoire, but one that he often does well. And when he does it well... Continue Reading

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Ionarts-at-Large: The Hagen Quartett in Shostakovich, Dvořák and Schubert

DSCH, String Quartets 4, 11, 14 Hagen Quartet DG

A.Dvorak, Cypresses, "American Quartet + Kodaly, String Quartet No.2 Hagen Quartet DG

Schubert, Trout Quintet, Death & the Maiden Quartet Hagen Quartet + James Levine & Alois Posch DG

Hagen Quartett Reviews on ionarts: Notes from the 2013 Schubertiade ( 7 ) • Hagen Quartett II Notes from the 2012 Salzburg Festival ( 4 ) Dip Your Ears, Addendum 48b (X-Ray Beethoven) [2005]

The Hagen Quartet increasingly seems like a holdover from a bygone time where classical superstars were fewer but bigger, about four record companies ruled the classical high seas, recording contracts were naturally exclusive, and new releases a real event. Itzhak Perlman, Misha Maisky, the Emerson Quartet, Martha Argerich – to mention three still-active acts, are representatives of this age of mythic musical dinosaurs… and the Hagen Quartet belongs, too. They once set the standard for hyper-precise perfection; a sort-of Pierre Boulez of String Quartets.

There have been several crops of string quartets who have since equaled these technical standards to the point where they alone are no longer all that noteworthy. The Hagen Quartet’s UPC of über-perfection that not even the similarly pioneering Alban Berg and Emerson Quartet could rival is therefore no more – also because the quartet’s ability has declined not only in relative but also absolute terms. No one is cheating age, and the first violinist of the ensemble, Lukas Hagen, least of them – having been the quartet’s weak point in the last half decade or so.

That should be put to the test in their recital on Saturday, March 2^nd, at the Mozart Hall of Vienna’s Konzerthaus, seeing that Shostakovich’s Fourth String Quartet was first on the bill. The sublime hall – one of the best for chamber music (with a capacity of 700, fine acoustics and bright blue and beautiful interior) – was filled to the brim, with extra chairs put on stage to accommodate the demand: The result of the Hagen Quartet have built themselves a following with regular appearances and their own cycle of concerts over the course of well more than a decade.

The Shostakovich started out with Lukas Hagen’s fittingly dark, matt, husky tone and enormous pressure he put on the notes in the introductory quartet. He did just fine for a movement and more before being notably squeezed to the edge of his increasingly small comfort zone in the Andantino. Clemens Hagen, still an anchor for the foursome (a brief flat moment in the Schubert aside), shone with moments of his singularly light-yet-resonant tone. For three movements the interpretation was a bit like excellent painting by numbers, more beautiful than intense, but the accumulating energy of the finale – if not boisterous at least insistent – amounted to something.

What the subsequent four movements of Dvořák’s Cypresses Quartet and Schubert’s Death and the Maiden showed, was that the once trademark transparency and inner glow has given way to a denser, thicker sound, more sonorous and ‘woodier’. That didn’t necessarily suit the Dvořák (largely low-energy pieces that are admittedly difficult to pull off with any great panache), where “I Know that My Love to Thee”, “Death Reigns in Many a Human Breast”, “The Old Letter in My Book” and “Thou Only, Dear One” (plus “Thou Only, Dear One” as an encore after the Schubert) never came across as more than a musical afterthought – a long lull between Shostakovich and Schumann, achingly sincere at best and insufficiently endowed with life and spark.

Lukas Hagen, with his intonation softening and too often falling back onto a forced and congested sound, gently, subtly squeaked in distress like a Maiden might, faced with death. The middle voices, Rainer Schmidt, violin, and Veronika Hagen, viola, were on the passive side – not breathy nor hollow as one might wish in the Schubert Quaret’s second movement, but with tenderness and gentle detail. The playing was altogether short of a distinct ‘interpretation’ or, to spin it positively, free of excessive fingerprints. The Hagen Quartet aren’t spinning their

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A Survey of Shostakovich String Quartet Cycles

An Index of ionarts Discographies

Continuing my discographies, this is a survey of - hopefully - every extant recorded cycle of Shostakovich's String Quartets. As opposed to the 16 quartets of Beethoven's, where the survey covers nearly six dozen cycles, there are 'only' about 20 such cycles of Shostakovich's String Quartets out. For now, they are neatly bookended by the Borodin Quartet's first and fourth attempt at a cycle. (Raising the question, à la “Can you step in the same river twice?”, whether a string quartet is still the same string quartet 50 years later, with all new members).

The Borodin also raises the question as to what is a complete-enough cycle. Their first cycle, containing quartets 1-13, certainly counts - it was complete at the time and 13 out of 15 ain't bad. The Borodin's digital re-recordings of quartets 2, 3, 7, 8 & 12 for Virgin, however, which may or may not have been intended to be a cycle, don't qualify in my book. (Also, I don't think they are particularly good). Neither do the Hagen Quartet, who recorded six quartets (3, 7, 8 & 4, 11, 14), the excellent Jerusalem Quartet's 6/15 cycle (ionarts review), the St. Petersburg Quartet's first go at it for Sony (1, 2, 4 + 3, 5, 7), or the Rubio Quartet's first attempt at a cycle on Globe from 1996 - 98 (1, 4, 8, 2, 3, 5 + 7, 9, 12) or the Quatuor Debussy's six quartets (3, 7, 10, & 4, 8, 13), or the Aviv Quartet's eight quartets (1, 4, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 & 13), or the Prazak's two discs (7, 8, 14, 15 + op.36), or the Kopelman Quartet's recordings on Nimbus (1, 8 + Miaskovsky, 2 + E.Kissin [sic!], 3, 7 + Prokofiev & 10 + Weinberg), although their programming was innovative and prefigured the Pacifica cycle. (Then again, it still seems ongoing and might yet be finished.) There's even the Japanese Morgaua Quartet recording these works (when they don't dabble in progressive rock) with a cycle about half-way through and available only from/via Japan.

I am sitting on the data for several new discographic entries under work. Ring cycles, Mahler, Nielsen, Martinů and Beethoven symphony-cycles, as well as Bartók string quartet-cycles. They just take an awful lot of time to research and then put into html-presentable shape and even then they are rarely complete or mistake free. Neither will this one be, and every such post is also a plea to generously inclined readers with more information and knowledge of the subject than I have to lend a helping hand correcting my mistakes or filling data-lacunae. I am explicitly grateful for any such pointers, hinters, and corrections and apologize for any bloomers. Unlike some earlier discographies, this one does intend to be comprehensive. So I am especially grateful if sets that I have missed are pointed out to me. I have not listened to them all, of course, but most. Favorites are indicated with the "ionarts choice" graphic. With several hundred links in this document, there are, despite my best efforts, bound to be some that are broken or misplaced; I am glad about every correction that comes my way about those, too.

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At Washington Classical Review: Petrenko returns to Baltimore, brings Shostakovich

Shostakovich, Complete Symphonies, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, V. Petrenko (2015)

Charles T. Downey, Petrenko leads Baltimore Symphony in incendiary Shostakovich
Washington Classical Review, October 15

SEE ALSO:
Charlotte Higgins, Male conductors are better for orchestras, says Vasily Petrenko (The Guardian, September 2, 2013)

Hannah Levintova, Here's Why You Seldom See Women Leading a Symphony (Mother Jones, September 23, 2013)

Adam Sweeting, Petrenko: I don't believe women conductors are a distraction (The Telegraph, May 8, 2014)

Tanglewood Fellows Take on Weighty Subjects with Aplomb

TMC Vocal Fellow Fleur Barron and Dominik Belavy perform in Seven Deadly Sins in Ozawa Hall (photo by Hilary Scott)
It is a rare night when one can experience as varied a program as Shostakovich’s fourteenth symphony and Kurt Weill’s The Seven Deadly Sins, described by the composer as a ballet with song. The occasion was an evening concert by the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra and the TMC Vocal Fellows, some of the world’s most talented college-age and graduate-student musicians and singers.

Weill had recently escaped Germany, and arrest by the Gestapo, in 1933 when he collaborated in Paris with his former partner Bertolt Brecht on The Seven Deadly Sins, a commission from George Balanchine’s new dance company, Les Ballets. Brecht disliked ballet but proposed a hybrid: a cantata with dance. It tells the story of a girl named Anna from Louisiana. Anna’s dual sides were to be assumed by two women: Anna I, played by a singer, is practical; Anna II, a dancer, is beautiful but careless. Weill’s estranged wife, Lotte Lenya, was the original Anna I. Backing Anna is a quartet of male singers, a Greek chorus of sorts, representing her family.

Anna leaves her family in Louisiana to seek her destiny on a seven-year, seven-city U.S. trip. Her orders are to to make money and send it home so the family can build “a cozy house” on the banks of the Mississippi. At each stop along Anna’s journey another deadly sin is encountered, beginning with sloth, moving to pride, anger, gluttony, lust, avarice, and ending with envy. In reality, the work is a critique of capitalism and world politics, understandable given the ordeal Weill and Brecht, both of whom had to flee Germany, had undergone.

Other Articles: Jeremy Eichler, Illuminating darkness in Weill and Shostakovich (Boston Globe, August 10) Andrew L. Pincus, Two howls of protest in TMCO double bill of works from the dark days of the 20th century (Berkshire Eagle, August 9) Charles T. Downey, From the NSO, a pops concert that fizzled (Washington Post, April 29)

The TMC performance altered things slightly, with both sides of Anna played by the English mezzo-soprano Fleur Barron, who was asked to sing and dance. Barron’s voice was clear and pleasant, and at times the brass of the large orchestra drowned her out, but this is a quibble. Where she excelled was crafting a character, using her voice, stage presence and just enough dance movement. It was a dazzling performance. Kudos, too, to her ‘family’ of Daveed Buzaglo, Christopher Sokolski, Ryne Cherry, and T. Hastings Reeves, whose ensemble and solo singing were highlights. The stage director and designer Nic Muni, a TMC faculty member, used a sparse stage well. Portuguese conducting fellow Nuno Coelho was an appropriate choice to lead the orchestra, which he did expertly. Recently appointed assistant conductor of the Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra, Coelho is attending Tanglewood on a Maurice Abravanel Scholarship. Abravenel was the conductor for Seven Deadly Sins’ first performance in 1933.

While Seven Deadly Sins contained flecks of humor, nothing approaching a laugh enters Shostakovich’s fourteenth symphony, which centers on death. Concerned for his health after a massive heart attack in 1966, Shostakovich composed this non-symphony-like symphony, in 10 movements, for 19 strings, 10 percussion instruments, soprano and bass. Despite its singular subject matter, the work was a revelation, if a sobering one. Led with great sensitivity and skill by Christian Reif, recently appointed resident conductor of the San Francisco Symphony, the soprano and bass solos were handled by five TMC Vocal Fellows and two TMC Vocal Fellow alums/faculty members: Dawn Upshaw and Sanford Sylvan. The variety of voices was a welcome update to the work, which has the vocalists singing death poems by four different authors.

The acoustics and intimacy of Seiji Ozawa Hall helped highlight Shostakovich’s orchestration. Featuring some of the most difficult string parts in the repertoire, the symphony evokes the somber tone of death with a series of solos for principal players of the lower strings: violas, celli, and basses, eschewing the sweeter sound of the violin. In addition, Shostakovich frequently has section members join the principal after a solo. Accompanied mostly by a solo cello, played gorgeously by Andrew Laven, Ms. Upshaw was in splendid voice during the spare fourth movement. Later, in the ninth movement, a gorgeous cello trio accompanied Sylvan to poignant effect. While the symphony’s texts are depressing, the performance of them was masterful.

The seats in the hall for this Monday evening performance seemed about 80% full, but the lawn attendance, on a beautiful, cool, clear night was sparse. For the 2nd half, when many in the Deadly Sins orchestra were able to sit in the audience to hear the Shostakovich, the room filled up to about 90%. The lawn and Shed crowds on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday were noticeably smaller than in the past. Sunday especially was generally a near sell-out in the Shed in most years. Not so this past Sunday where wide swaths of empty seats could be seen up front and in the back. In previous years to make your way through the lawn you literally had to step on peoples' picnic blankets. That was not the case this weekend. There was plenty of room to walk between picnic parties. Hopefully, this dip in attendance was only a momentary blip and not an indication of a general trend.