REVIEW POTPOURRI: Captivating concerts

by Peter Cates

Between July1973, and August 1980, I attended a number of captivating concerts in Boston, New York, Washington D.C. and Portland.

In October 1973, the touring Leningrad Philharmonic under the direction of Gennady Rozhdestvensky (1931-2018) appeared at Symphony Hall, the program consisting of the 15th Symphony, completed just two years earlier by then-still living Dimitri Shostakovich, and the deservedly popular Tchaikovsky 5th Symphony.

I remember observing the gray-haired musicians in the orchestra, figuring with my perhaps over-active imagination that these men had lived many years under the evil bloodthirsty Stalin – again, I may also have been right; the gray hairs were courtesy of Stalin and not due to the causes of gray hairs from anxiety about finances and all other usual miseries from living in our democracy.

The orchestra was an all male one, whereas major American Orchestras were already admitting women.

The performances were top notch. Rozhdestvensky was a magician with the baton and had made his conducting debut at the age of 29 in 1960. His father Nicolai Anosov was also a gifted conductor and and the chief instructor of Gennady, who adopted his mother’s surname to avoid the appearance of nepotism.

A few days later I visited Discount Records’s downtown branch across the street from Jordan Marsh and found out from a friend that the Maestro and the musicians visited the store the morning after the concert and loaded up on records, one of that store’s biggest sales in months.

The Leningrad Philharmonic’s regular conductor from 1938 to his death in 1988 was Yevgeny Mravinsky, whose own work was phenomenal and who was admired by just about every conductor in the business, including Leopold Stokowski. Youtube has videos of Mravinsky at work; his poker faced expression and minimal movements with his hands below the elbows are fascinating to observe as he achieves the most exciting performances.

An example is the above-mentioned Tchaikovsky 5th Symphony – one of his players told of performing it 113 times over the years and of every performance having a freshness as though it was being played for the first time.

Outside of conducting, Mravinsky’s favorite activity was fishing in a nearby stream. He was also a member of the Russian Orthodox Church and did not suffer from persecution as most of Christians from the Soviet government, most likely due to his international fame, although it is rumored that the KGB kept a close eye on him.

Interestingly, when Leningrad was besieged and surrounded by the Nazis for 900 days, Mravinsky, the musicians and their immediate families were evacuated in the nick of time to Moscow and points east.

Highly recommended recordings:

Mravinsky – the Tchaikovsky Symphonies 4, 5 and Pathetique and, with Sviatoslav Richter, the First Piano Concerto, and the Shostakovich 5th, 7th, 10th and 11th Symphonies.

Rozhdestvensky – the 7 Sibelius Symphonies and, with David Oistrakh, the Violin Concerto, and the 9 Symphonies of English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams.

After the 1989 collapse of the Iron Curtain, the Leningrad Philharmonic reverted back to its pre-Bolshevik name of the Saint Petersburg Philharmonic.

Must reading

Browsing in a 1900 biography, Henry Knox – A Soldier of the Revolution, by Noah Brooks, we find the following about 1778 when the year was drawing to a close and victory in the American Revolution was still three years in the future:

“The year closed without any important engagements on the land; but on the sea the exploits of Paul Jones and the destructive doings of the American privateers carried panic and terror into the commercial cities of England. The foreign commerce of that country was paralyzed by the ‘pirates,’ as the English called these dreaded craft. Nearly five hundred vessels engaged in deep-sea voyages were captured or destroyed by the Americans in the year 1777…”

Henry Knox (1750-1806) was not only a Major General during the War for Independence but also Secretary of War in President Washington’s cabinet. He later moved to Thomaston where he died due to intestinal damage from chicken bones.

In Carl Van Doren’s 1938 biography, Benjamin Franklin, the author mentions Parliament having nightmares when British spies sighted Franklin in Paris negotiating for, and receiving, French support for the American armies.

Both books are fascinating for their narrative vitality.