Monumental 'Leningrad' lives up to its marketing hype

When I saw this week's Minnesota Orchestra concerts being billed as "A Russian Spectacular," I was wary. It sounded like marketing hype for an unfamiliar program, Prokofiev's Violin Concerto No. 2 and Shostakovich's Symphony No. 7, "Leningrad." Especially in terms of the Shostakovich, the description proved entirely accurate.

Both works represent their composers' responses to Stalin's conservative musical tastes, labeled "social realism." Prokofiev wrote an intimate, lyrical concerto; Shostakovich created a patriotic tone poem.

The violin dominates in the concerto, announcing the first theme solo, before being joined by the orchestra. Israeli violinist Vadim Gluzman chose to play with a dry, thin tone. (He played the Tchaikovsky encore much more refulgently.) That marred the passion of his playing, and the orchestra often overwhelmed him. The long cantilena lines of the second movement sounded overly shrill.

Conductor Andrew Litton led a well-matched reading. Missing was the warm sensuousness of Prokofiev's score, in favor of an equally dry orchestral sound.

The interpretation was most successful in the driven and aggressive finale. The virtuosity and intensity of both soloist and orchestra ended up compelling.

Shostakovich's Seventh Symphony is a monumental work. Its first movement alone is longer than the entire Prokofiev concerto. It was written during the Nazi siege of Leningrad and is a descriptive paean to both victims and survivors.

Litton, a passionate advocate of Shostakovich, maintained a clear sense of the overriding arc of the piece. He nicely balanced the lyrical and explosive elements, like the first movement's majestic opening and the succeeding pastoral section.

There followed one of the symphony's most striking elements: a martial theme, representative of the Nazi invasion, repeated for 11 minutes. Building like Ravel's "Bolero," it reached a harrowing conclusion, during which the orchestra sounded extraordinary.

That is barely the midpoint of the movement, which ultimately ends softly with a requiem-like passage honoring the victims.

Litton gave the lyrical scherzo a sense of mournful nostalgia, and generated an almost religious fervor to the third movement. He brought the finale to an ironic conclusion: There was victory, but a hollow one.

This symphony is rarely performed. (Its celebration of the Russian people became anathema during the Cold War era.) Litton made it one of the highlights of the season.

William Randall Beard writes regularly about music.