United States ‘Kissin and Pals’ – Shostakovich: Evgeny Kissin (piano), Gautier Capuçon (cello), Gidon Kremer (violin), Maxim Rysanov (viola). Carnegie Corridor, New York, 28.5.2025. (ES-S)
Shostakovich – Cello Sonata in D minor, Op.40; Violin Sonata in G main, Op.134; Viola Sonata, Op.147
Not surprisingly, nobody has accomplished extra in america to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of Dmitri Shostakovich’s demise than two of the best musicians born and musically educated within the former Soviet Union: Evgeny Kissin and Andris Nelsons. As music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Nelsons curated ‘Decoding Shostakovich’, a multi-week immersion within the composer’s symphonic works. Kissin, for his half, assembled ‘Kissin and Pals’, a chamber sequence centered on Shostakovich’s sonatas and different intimate works – few, however wealthy in expressive and emotional depth. Each initiatives traveled to main European levels, with Nelsons and the BSO making a very resonant look at Leipzig’s Shostakovich Pageant, held within the metropolis the place he additionally serves as Kapellmeister of the Gewandhaus Orchestra.
The primary of the 2 ‘Kissin and Pals’ packages this week was devoted fully to Shostakovich’s three sonatas for solo string devices and piano – an intimate, chronological journey via greater than 4 a long time of the composer’s output. Kissin provided a program that mirrored properly his present inventive priorities. Lately, he has regularly moved away from any gratuitous show of athleticism, adopting a extra contemplative and on the identical time emotional method to music making. Kissin was joined by three distinguished collaborators: cellist Gautier Capuçon, violinist Gidon Kremer and violist Maxim Rysanov. The Cello Sonata (1934), the earliest and most steadily carried out of the group, balances classical readability with moments of wit and theatrical vitality. The Violin Sonata (1968) is a extreme and structurally demanding work, integrating twelve-tone procedures right into a bleak and uncompromising sound world. The Viola Sonata (1975), accomplished simply weeks earlier than Shostakovich’s demise, is probably the most introspective and elegiac – its silences as eloquent as its themes. Although related in format, every sonata inhabits its personal expressive world, and collectively they type a compressed but revealing chronicle of Shostakovich’s chamber voice throughout the a long time.
The live performance opened with the Cello Sonata, probably the most instantly accessible of the three works. Gautier Capuçon’s beneficiant tone was a defining pressure from the beginning – resonant and unforced, his Matteo Goffriller cello projected heat even in restrained dynamics. Within the Allegro non troppo, his phrasing was broad and brazenly emotive, typically leaning towards rubato, whereas Kissin maintained a extra contained rhythmic profile. That distinction prolonged to the second, major-key theme, which Kissin formed with heat and evident affection, although at all times with inward reserve; Capuçon, against this, opened into the phrase bodily and lyrically, drawing the melodic line outward. The steadiness labored to refined impact, although the distinction between themes may have been extra pointed. Within the Largo, the cellist provided a long-breathed cantilena of hanging poignancy – virtually Schubertian in its personal lyricism. The muted tone stretched practically to the purpose of suspension, extra elegy than lullaby. The finale unleashed a manic vitality, Capuçon relishing its angular drive whereas Kissin’s brittle, percussive articulation saved the feel taut. If the efficiency softened among the sonata’s irony, it compensated with bodily engagement and emotional immediacy.
The Violin Sonata is certainly a extreme and structurally demanding work. Written in 1968 as a sixtieth-birthday tribute to the good David Oistrakh, it’s something however festive – its inward severity, stark textures and cryptic twelve-tone framework recommend personal reckoning greater than public homage. Gidon Kremer, who met Shostakovich through the composer’s ultimate years, introduced a way of private connection to the work, although the efficiency often underplayed the tense emotion beneath the floor. Within the opening Andante, Kremer’s tone was subdued, his phrasing tentative, and the latent sense of resistance beneath the music’s calm exterior was by no means totally drawn out. Kissin, regular and unflinching, carried the motion ahead with readability and structural intent. The Allegretto – a sort of grotesque danse macabre – introduced a sudden jolt of vitality. Kremer responded with better urgency and boldness, even when his pitch was sporadically not sure. The motion’s acerbic wit, nevertheless, remained considerably muted. It was solely within the ultimate motion {that a} sense of cohesion totally emerged. The passacaglia variations, relatively than evolving in shut tandem, unfolded via distinct and sometimes solitary statements, with every participant taking turns to replicate and withdraw. The efficiency conveyed a quiet, disjointed dignity – one which suited the music’s unsettled, tinged-with-uncertainty farewell.
The Viola Sonata, Shostakovich’s ultimate composition, introduced the recital to a subdued and twilight-colored shut. Composed in the summertime of 1975 and accomplished simply weeks earlier than his demise, it’s haunted by allusions to earlier music, forged in a language of utmost restraint. Kissin and violist Maxim Rysanov captured that stress with outstanding sensitivity. From the quiet pizzicatos that opened the Moderato, Rysanov maintained a hushed, centered tone, by no means drawing undue consideration to the road however shaping it with luminous focus. The motion’s stark alternation between piano and viola – much less a dialogue than a sequence of name and withdrawal – echoed the fragmented construction of the Violin Sonata’s passacaglia, although right here the gestures felt extra reflective and reconciled.
The central Allegretto provided fleeting glimpses of sardonic humor, however every flash was rapidly extinguished, overtaken by darker sonorities within the piano or a biting pizzicato that landed like a muted shriek. Within the ultimate Adagio, the allusion to Beethoven’s ‘Moonlight’ Sonata surfaced not as citation however as light memory, barely stabilized by the tolling piano motif beneath it. The performers sustained an extended, luminous line via the ultimate bars, arriving on the rating’s morendo not as a dramatic gesture however as a pure expiration. Rysanov performed with a radiant inwardness that gave even the silences form. As within the ultimate pages of Mahler’s Ninth Symphony – a piece Shostakovich revered – there was a way of a soul hovering between resignation and refusal, between the impulse to fade and the longing to stay. On the identical time, in plastic phrases, the environment recalled certainly one of Mark Rothko’s late Seagram Murals, the place distinctions of type and coloration slowly dissolve into shadow. What remained was not silence however one thing simply past attain – withdrawn, however nonetheless perceived.
Edward Sava-Segal
