Pasadenans to Tackle Wartime Shostakovich Symphony

Dmitri Shostakovich’s historic Seventh Symphony, which the Pasadena Symphony, under Jorge Mester, revives Saturday night as the fifth installment of an ongoing Shostakovich cycle, has long been viewed as a programmatic relic of the darkest days of World War II.

Commemorating the siege of Leningrad (September, 1941, to February, 1943) by armies of Nazi Germany, the evening-long Seventh remains an outsize work in both musical and emotional scope.

Dmitri’s son, Maxim, however, says he considers the “Leningrad” Symphony not programmatic (or storytelling) but only “humanistic.”

On the phone from Connecticut, the 51-year-old Soviet emigre says, “This is not really a work ‘about’ a specific war, but ‘about’ wars in general, and human suffering particularly.

“That is the strength of this symphony, and the reason it remains great. Of course, it is always difficult to talk about music, to describe it in words. But I feel--and this is only my own opinion-- that the Seventh Symphony deals with human cataclysm in a universal way, even though it was written in a particular place in specific circumstances.”

Begun after the start of the siege, the work was written mostly in Leningrad.

The first performance, by the evacuated orchestra of the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow and conducted by Samuil Samosud, took place in Kuibyshev in March, 1942. The work reached Moscow three weeks later and was played in Leningrad itself--by the orchestra for which it was intended, the Radio Orchestra of Leningrad--on Aug. 9 of that year. Arturo Toscanini had already given the U.S. premiere, a month earlier, with the NBC Symphony.

Maxim Shostakovich, a resident of this country for the past decade and now music director of the New Orleans Symphony, says he has conducted the work numerous times but most memorably at a 25th-anniversary celebration of the end of World War II in Leningrad, where some of the original members of the Radio Orchestra performance also participated.

“Like all my father’s symphonies, this one is unique. Each of these has its own special character, and not a lot in common with the others.” He remembers the first time he heard the work in 1943, in a later performance back at Kuibyshev, site of the premiere.

“I was only 5 years old, but I remember the occasion if not all the details. The work was a great success, and I recall how good were the candies my mother bought for us at intermission--my sister and I had come all the way from Leningrad (about 900 miles).”

Mester will lead the expanded Pasadena ensemble in the Seventh Symphony Saturday night at 8:30 in Pasadena Civic Auditorium. Previous installments in the cycle were the 10th Symphony in 1985-86, the Eighth (1986-87), the Sixth (1987-88) and the Fourth (1988-89).

JOFFREY ON TOUR: The Joffrey Ballet will launch its 1990 national tour with West Coast premieres of works by Bronislava Nijinska and artistic director Gerald Arpino. Another premiere will be a ballet created by Joffrey dancer Edward Stierle and dedicated to company founder Robert Joffrey. The eight-city tour opens March 9 at the new Lied Center for the Performing Arts in Lincoln, Neb.

Stierle’s new work, “Lacrymosa,” set to Mozart’s Requiem, was originated in the Joffrey II Choreographers’ Workshop, the company’s training program.

Among the other new ballets to be presented this season is Arpino’s “The Pantages and the Palace Present Two-a-Day.” Set to a score by Rebekah Harkness and Elliot Kaplan, the work is a tribute to vaudeville and the early days of motion pictures. “Two-a-Day” had its world premiere at the Kennedy Center Opera House in October.

Nijinska’s 1923 masterwork “Les Noces,” a collaboration with composer Igor Stravinsky, tells the tale of a Russian peasant wedding. “Les Noces” was staged for the Joffrey by Nijinska’s daughter, Irina, and Howard Sayette of Oakland Ballet.

Also highlighting the spring-summer program are revivals of Arpino’s “Italian Suite,” and his rock celebration “Trinity,” John Cranko’s “Romeo and Juliet,” and “The Green Table,” Kurt Jooss’ anti-war work first re-created by the Joffrey in 1967.

The Joffrey will present this repertoire May 2-27 at its annual spring engagement in the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.

Heath Recording--Beethoven’s Triple Concerto, conducted by former British Prime Minister Edward Heath, is released on CD in the United States by MCA Classics (MCAC 25878). The English distributor catalogue numbers were published in a Dec. 17 article on Heath.