Golden Gidon
W.A.Mozart and Dmitri Shostakovich
Kremerata Baltica and Gidon Kremer
The Sheldonian Theatre, Oxford
21st April 2006
There are few ensembles these days who have what might be termed a catholic repertoire, but Gidon Kremer’s Kremerata Baltica, an orchestra founded by Kremer in 1997 to show off the musical talent of the Baltic nations, seem to excel at playing everything from Piazolla to Pärt. Yet in pairing the manic and highly emotive sounds of Shostakovich with the poised and elegant music of Mozart it was possible that, in the words of Madness, it was possible they might have gone ‘One step beyond.
This interesting Shostakovich-Mozart sandwich began with Shostakovich’s Two pieces for String Octet (Op.11), a composition that was written when he was 18 and is a piece that is at once tumultuous and magnifi cent, a brilliant successor to Mendelssohn’s equally precocious Octet.
In a piece that featured all the complexity of later Shostakovich, with harsh, sometimes dissonant sounds interspaced with moments of comparative, if fl eeting, tranquillity, the Kremerata demonstrated a skill and a sensitivity that is prerequisite for good Shostakovich playing, while with Gidon Kremer both leading the orchestra and the violins, there were, in places, brief but unmistakable explosions of virtuosity. The Mozart that followed was rather a tonic for shaken nerves.
Coming from Mozart’s early years, while still resident in Salzburg, the Sinfonia Concertante in E fl at major for Violin and Viola (K.364) was a piece that was never going to plumb the emotional depths like the Shostakovich. Nevertheless the soulful passages of dark, expressive writing for the solo viola, played by Ula Ulijona Zebriunaite, added a layer of expression that is uncommon in early Mozart.
Unfortunately, not even the skill of the Kremerata could disguise the fact this piece was not one of Mozart’s most interesting or brilliant pieces, relying on a compositional style that was For the fi rst piece of the second half, the Kremerata returned without their leader to play Rudolf Barshai’s arrangement of Shostakovich’s 10th String quartet, the Chamber Symphony, Op.118a.
In a piece that begins in an unsettled mood and explodes into an unforgettable and fi ery Allegretto furioso full of raw energy and then leads into sinuous and sometimes fugic fi nale, Kremerata Baltica showed themselves to be an ensemble that did not their eponymous leader to produce music making of an extraordinary. Kremer returned for the last piece on the programme, Mozart’s Serenade in D major, K.
39, the Serenata Notturna, a piece which features a central string quartet of two violins, a viola and double bass and a secondary string orchestra with Timpanis, an arrangement that Mozart used to both explore antiphonal effects and also to play a series of Musical jokes and tricks.
Kremer decided to go with the spirit of the piece and added a few musical jokes of his own to the fi nale, from the maestro himself doing a spot of gypsy fi ddling, to a Timpani solo to Für Elise being played as a Double Bass Duet. Kremer’s choice of encore was equally amusing, playing a regal series of versions of Happy Birthday which ranged from the Mozartian to Tango style and culminated in a whirling marriage of the original tune with Brahms’s Hungarian Dance No.1.
Although the Kremerata got a gale of laughs, there was no doubting either the skill or the seriousness of this fantastic ensemble and their remarkable director.
27th Apr 2006