“It was inevitable that the tormented Shostakovich would someday be the focus of one of the Pacific Symphony’s multidisciplinary ‘Music Unwound’ projects,” writes Richard Ginell in Saturday’s (2/1) Los Angeles Times. “Although Shostakovich has been ‘unwound’ innumerable times since Solomon Volkov’s ‘Testimony: The Memoirs of Dmitri Shostakovich’ came out in 1979, his case remains endlessly riveting—and there was plenty to ponder at Renee and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall on Thursday night. The Chapman String Quartet played the autobiographical Quartet No. 8 in front of a cardboard cutout of the Kremlin in the lobby before the concert … Carl St.Clair led a rollicking, turbulent orchestral interlude from the opera that drew the wrath of Josef Stalin, ‘Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk District,’ followed by the coda of the Symphony No. 5 and its implied message of jubilation under threat. Actor David Prather read from ‘Testimony’ … after the concert, Volkov himself joined St.Clair, pianist Alexander Toradze, artistic advisor Joseph Horowitz, and audience members onstage for probing reminiscences and theories about Shostakovich and Stalin.” Timothy Mangan’s January 22 article in the Orange County Register (Santa Ana, California) features an in-depth discussion of the same Pacific Symphony program.
Posted February 4, 2014
