Transcriptions in classical music live in a sort of limbo. Re-castings of symphonies, concertos, tone poems and songs for chamber music are sniffed at by some purists. The instruments may not be what the composer wrote, but they can let us hear the original ideas with different ears.<\/p>\n
Pianist Inon Barnatan, cellist Alisa Weilerstein and percussionist Colin Currie demonstrated exactly that in a remarkably effective metamorphosis of Shostakovich\u2019s Symphony No. 15. It topped off a quirky recital program Thursday night in Harris Hall.<\/p>\n
The composer\u2019s final symphony, which debuted in 1972, trades in its own brand of eccentricity, a riot of biting dissonances cheek-by-jowl with skippy tunes and heart-on-sleeve emotional gestures, brilliantly orchestrated, all leavened by the composer\u2019s snarky humor (including direct quotations of Rossini and Wagner).<\/p>\n
Viktor Derevianko\u2019s arrangement, which dates from the 1990s and was recorded memorably in 2005 by Gidon Kremer\u2019s Kremerata Baltica, puts the spotlight on percussion. Indeed since some of the piece\u2019s most memorable moments owe to pings of the glockenspiel, rattlings of the snare drum, and thrums of timpani to accompany the finale\u2019s sly reference to Wagner\u2019s music for \u201cSiegfried\u2019s Death.\u201d A battery of wood block, whips and gong finished the piece\u2019s 45 minutes with clarity rarely achieved in an orchestral setting.<\/p>\n
All this was executed with refinement by visiting artist Colin Currie, a soloist famous for championing the music of Steve Reich, and artist-faculty stalwarts Jonathan Haas and Douglas Howard. The percussion made its presence felt more often as seasoning for the melodic and harmonic efforts of Barnatan, Weilerstein and Russian-American violinist Philippe Quint (stepping in at the last moment for Sergey Khachatryan).<\/p>\n
Barnatan did most of the heavy lifting \u2014 his impressive ability is to coax a range of touches, from slender to grand, bitingly crisp to achingly supple \u2014 to approximate the full panoply of Shostakovich\u2019s orchestral color. Barnatan compensated with brilliant pianism. For her part, Weilerstein carried the cello line, which in the first movement\u2019s drops in references to \u201cWilliam Tell\u201d with wit. She opened up moments of expressive lyricism in the slow movement, and generally applied her own star quality to the mix. Quint overcame some early intonation issues to declaim the top line effectively.<\/p>\n
To open the program, Barnatan provided the requisite thrust to make Beethoven\u2019s Piano Trio in D major \u201cGhost\u201d spring to life. Weilerstein and Quint shared a unanimity of purpose with him. In between, anticipating the thread of humor that would run through the Shostakovich, Currie drew on a diversity of tone with mallets from hard to soft, applying jaw-dropping articulation to Norwegian composer Rolf Wallin\u2019s marimba surrealist showpiece, \u201cRealismos M\u00e1gicos.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wednesday in Harris Hall, the American String Quartet\u2019s annual recital yielded a particularly extroverted performance of big, broad music, impeccably played.<\/p>\n
Dvor\u00e1k\u2019s String Quartet in F major \u201cAmerican\u201d started things off. The quartet relished the pentatonic gestures and folk-like melodies of the first major work to emerge from the Czech composer\u2019s multi-year visit to the U.S. in the 1890s. The players struck a canny balance between these Americanisms and the solidly European form and style of the composer.<\/p>\n