{"id":7397,"date":"2018-09-28T10:56:55","date_gmt":"2018-09-28T08:56:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.riccardomuti.com\/?p=7397"},"modified":"2021-06-01T08:41:00","modified_gmt":"2021-06-01T06:41:00","slug":"photogallery-chicago-2018","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.riccardomuti.com\/en\/2018\/09\/28\/photogallery-chicago-2018\/","title":{"rendered":"CSO, Riccardo Muti soar to new heights in Shostakovich\u00a0program"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Friday night, with music director Riccardo Muti on the podium, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra offered the last of Shostakovich\u2019s titled symphonies: the rarely performed Symphony No. 13 (\u201cBabi Yar\u201d). It was the first concert of the CSO\u2019s new Symphony Center season, and the audience\u2019s mood was festive. But Muti channeled that excitement into rapt, almost reverent attention with a searing performance of a dramatic work that is very close to his heart. After the performance, Shostakovich\u2019s 84-year-old widow, Irina Shostakovich, joined Muti onstage for a brief discussion.<\/p>\n

Composed in 1962 for bass soloist, male chorus and orchestra, Symphony No. 13 is set to five poems by contemporary Russian poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko. The opening poem, \u201cBabi Yar,\u201d was prompted by Yevtushenko\u2019s visit in 1961 to a ravine in Kiev, Ukraine, where more than 30,000 Jews had been shot early in World War II. The Soviets hushed up the 1941 massacre, and Yevtushenko\u2019s poem describing the site and denouncing Russian anti-Semitism was roundly condemned. Shostakovich was also criticized for setting it to music, and, after a handful of performances, the symphony was all but banned in the Soviet Union. Receiving a smuggled microfilm of the score in 1970, Muti conducted the symphony\u2019s first performance in the west, in Rome. Shostakovich received a tape of that performance, praised it and kept it until his death.<\/p>\n

The CSO\u2019s performance, with bass Alexey Tikhomirov and the men of the Chicago Symphony Chorus, revealed Muti\u2019s continuing devotion to Shostakovich\u2019s often-shattering music. Especially in the first three poems, \u201cBabi Yar,\u201d \u201cHumor\u201d and \u201cIn the Store,\u201d Muti and his musicians found the perfect balance of oppressive menace, shrieking outrage and deep melancholy that makes Shostakovich\u2019s music so intensely human.\u00a0Tikhomirov\u2019s voice doesn\u2019t have the dark, sepulchral color so typical of Russian basses, but its lighter texture brought a conversational quality to his Russian-language, long-lined melodies. In Yevtushenko\u2019s images of a haunted ravine, weary women waiting in an endless food line and the antic figure, humor, Tikhomirov was a spell-binding storyteller.<\/p>\n[…]\n

In remarks before the Shostakovich symphony, Muti called it \u201ca deep warning document for us and future generations. Every form of dictatorship,\u201d he said, \u201cshould be banned. It\u2019s about time that we find peace in this tragic world.\u201d<\/p>\n

After the concert, Irina Shostakovich sat onstage with Muti. She and the conductor are friends; after Shostakovich\u2019s death she gave Muti the tape of his 1970 \u201cBabi Yar\u201d performance that her husband had cherished.<\/p>\n

Speaking through a translator, she answered a question about Yevtushenko\u2019s dubious optimism at the end of his poem, \u201cFear,\u201d the symphony\u2019s fourth movement. Did Shostakovich really think that fear was dying in Russia in 1962? Speaking through a translator, she responded that fear exists in every country, in every society. Perhaps the symphony, she said, can give listeners \u201ccourage to fight the fear.\u201d<\/p>\n[…]\n

Free translation from
\n<\/span>Wynne Delacoma, Chicago Sun-Times<\/em>, September 23rd, 2018<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Chicago Symphony Center<\/p>\n

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Prokofiev<\/b>\u00a0Sinfonietta
\nShostakovich\u00a0<\/b>Symphony No. 13 (Babi Yar)<\/i><\/p>\n

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Chicago Symphony Orchestra<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Alexey Tikhomirov\u00a0bass<\/i>
\nMen of the Chicago Symphony Chorus
\nDuain Wolfe\u00a0chorus director<\/i><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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