Music and Dance Reviews : Shostakovich Symphony

Not heard in Los Angeles since the heyday of Franz Waxman’s Los Angeles Festival back in the early 1960s, Shostakovich’s Fourth Symphony deserves the re-introduction offered by Jorge Mester and the Pasadena Symphony over the weekend.

Everything you have heard about the Fourth is true: It is Mahlerian and massive, loud, excessive, sometimes uninspired, not very tuneful, long-winded, depressed and depressing. It is also in moments glorious, thrilling and engrossing. Most important--and the best reason for its resuscitation--it is pivotal in the composer’s development.

Mester and the beefed-up Pasadena orchestra--115 players occupied the stage of Civic Auditorium Saturday night--gave what seemed a fair and informed reading to the 65-minute work.

They didn’t unravel all the longueurs of the enigmatic opening movement, which still sprawled beyond comprehension. But they did find the humor and rhetoric, and an admirable transparency, in the Presto. And they made eloquent and followable the arch of thought which moves the Menuetto into the finale, and seemed to enrich that experience all the way to the conclusion.

Bombast is the trap here, but one in which the Pasadenans did not fall. Once beyond the numbness of the first-movement desert, interest in the orchestra never waned. Strong cohesion between orchestral choirs, operable instrumental balances, and solid solo-playing from the principal players made this a showcase for the ensemble as well as the composer. Holding the reins without strain, Mester presided over an intelligent and characterful reading.