The Boston Symphony Orchestra and music director Andris Nelsons are closing out their Symphony Hall season with a monthlong project called “Decoding Shostakovich.” It bills itself as an effort to revisit the political resonances of the composer’s works, a topic that has been contested almost since his works were fresh in their first listeners’ ears. Of course, there is also a more commercially minded reason for the project — namely, the recent release of the orchestra’s 19-CD box set of Shostakovich’s symphonies, concertos, and opera, “Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk District.”
At the core of Sunday’s program was the Symphony No. 6, one of Shostakovich’s most perplexing creations. Preceding it were two choral works, both BSO commissions: Stravinsky’s “Symphony of Psalms” (1930), a piece to which Shostakovich was deeply devoted; and “Love Canticles,” a new work by composer Aleksandra Vrebalov that was having its world premiere performances. It was difficult, at the end of the concert, to say that any fresh light had been thrown on Shostakovich’s political messaging, although that didn’t prevent it from being a deeply rewarding afternoon of music making.
The links between the Vrebalov and Stravinsky pieces are numerous and intentional. The BSO asked Vrebalov, who won the prestigious Grawemeyer Award for composition last year, to score biblical psalm texts and use an orchestra similar to the ingeniously odd one Stravinsky assembled for the “Symphony of Psalms” — replete with winds and brass but omitting violins, violas, and clarinets.
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They make for an even more fascinating contrast, though. “Love Canticles” has a numinous air to it, its laudatory texts set against largely dreamy, diaphanous textures. As God’s virtues are enumerated, things begin to fragment, and the music becomes more muscular and martial. After a tremendous climax and dissipation, the closing “Hallelujah” brings echoes of Byzantine chant, intoned by the chorus over flickering harmonics from the orchestra. This is a beautiful and mysterious piece, expertly orchestrated to create that impression.
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Next to the Vrebalov’s cosmic warmth, the “Symphony of Psalms,” an apex of Stravinsky’s neoclassical period, was bound to come across as even more rigorous and ascetic than it already is. If “Love Canticles” offers the psalms as a mystical embrace, Stravinsky presents them as solemn statements of fact. The blocklike choral writing, the intricate counterpoint in the middle movement, and the oasis of calm with which it concludes create an atmosphere that is profoundly moving in its sheer austerity.
Nelsons, the BSO, and the Tanglewood Festival Chorus were equally good in both works. The clarity of the choral singing was notable, as were the perfectly managed balances between the two large forces. Occasionally during the Stravinsky one wished for more variation in the dynamics, as everything seemed to exist on the same plane of loudness.
As for the Shostakovich, it is one of the composer’s strangest symphonies. It opens with an immense slow movement — so slow as to border on stasis — followed by a fast scherzo and an even faster finale.
Especially in comparison to the symphonies Shostakovich composed before and after it, the 6th seems largely free of both a political program and the angst that colors so much of Shostakovich’s other music. It is, as they say, a hard nut to crack.
Sunday’s performance didn’t really shed any light on what the composer might have “meant” with this unusual work. As a purely musical experience, though, it was a comprehensive triumph. It is difficult to imagine an orchestra playing this music better than the BSO did — a model of depth, transparency, and cohesive power. Nelsons’s pacing was expert, especially in the first movement, which never lost momentum despite its span. In the finale, he pushed the tempos to an extreme to show how antic and unironically witty this music is, almost as if Shostakovich were taking his cue from Haydn, music’s great comic master. If that was the “decoding” intended, mission accomplished.
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The final program of both “Decoding Shostakovich” and the season — consisting of the Violin Concerto No. 1 and Symphony No. 8 — is this weekend.
BOSTON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA
At Symphony Hall Sunday
David Weininger can be reached at globeclassicalnotes@gmail.com.
