San Diego Spotlight : Moscow Philharmonic’s U.S. Invasion Ends in S.D.

During the height of the Cold War, U.S. screenwriters and novelists freely indulged in fantasies of Russian military invasions. Scenarios included hordes of Soviet military types parachuting into Iowa and taking over the U.S countryside town by town. Ironically, now that the Cold War is over, the old cry “the Russians are coming!” is coming true. But the invasion is artistic--not military.

The most recent invading musical armada is the Moscow Philharmonic, which opened a 30-day, 18-city U.S. tour March 14 in Brooklyn. On April 12, the orchestra will conclude its cross-country sojourn with a 2 p.m. concert in San Diego’s Copley Symphony Hall, two days after playing Costa Mesa’s Orange County Performing Arts Center.

The 114-member orchestra is touring under the leadership of two guest conductors, Jansoug Kakhidze and Mark Erlmer. When the New York presenter ICM Artists put the tour together, Moscow Philharmonic music director Dimitri Kitayenko had recently resigned his post, and the orchestra was temporarily without a music director.

Though Kakhidze is not Russian--he is an immensely patriotic Georgian who is adviser and chief conductor of both the State Symphony of Georgia and the Paliashvili Opera of Tbilisi--he is already known in the United States. In 1988, he made his North American debut at Boston’s much-heralded and controversial “Making Music Together Festival,” where he conducted the American premiere of Rodion Shchedrin’s opera “Dead Souls.” Erlmer, long associated with Moscow’s Bolshoi Opera and Britain’s Royal Opera Covent Garden is known in the West primarily through his opera recordings.

Though there is nothing overtly political about the Moscow Philharmonic’s tour, the presence of two Shostakovich symphonies in the touring repertory has overtones of the demise of communism. (The Moscow Philharmonic will play Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony in Costa Mesa and the Tenth Symphony in San Diego.)

“If we are to connect music to politics,” Kakhidze observed, “I think that Shostakovich was highly political, at least from the time of his Fourth Symphony and his opera ‘Lady Macbeth.’ He was able to portray in his music the suffering of the Soviet people, of all people who fell under this terrible weight of communism.”

Kakhidze discussed Soviet music and life in post-communist Georgia over the phone from his hotel room in Florida.

“In his own way, Shostakovich was constantly calling the suffering people to salvation, if you will.”

The Shostakovich Fifth Symphony, although purported to be the composer’s submission to the musical constraints of Soviet Realism, has been understood since the composer’s death as a parody of the Communist Party’s official musical dogma. And the Tenth Symphony, written months after Stalin’s demise, has been interpreted as an indictment of the dictator’s tyranny. Kakhidze acknowledged, however, that Shostakovich needed to churn out the occasional patriotic chorus and bland movie score to appease the Soviet government’s musical censors.

“He composed some materials in praise of the party, but I do not consider this something bad. He had to survive in his environment in order to have the opportunity to speak to his people and call then to change.”

Kakhidze is a familiar and welcome presence in San Diego. For the city’s 1989 Soviet Arts Festival, the authoritative Georgian favored San Diego audiences with a powerful production of “Boris Godunov” and, at the last minute, replaced the ailing Russian conductor, Pavel Kogan, with the San Diego Symphony for three concerts. Kakhidze returned to the local orchestra’s podium in 1990 and is scheduled to conduct the San Diego Symphony in a program of Shchedrin and Dvorak here May 7 and 8.

The amount of conducting the in-demand Kakhidze does away from his native Georgia, however, tends to ruffle the feathers of his countrymen.

“For the past five years or so, I could say that about five months out of the season I spend working in the West. At home in Tbilisi, some people are getting upset.”

His conducting tours, however, have benefited the Georgian State Symphony directly and indirectly. On his last visit to Washington, for example, he purchased enough strings for all the bows in his orchestra. Not only was there a shortage of bow string in Georgia, but the players’ salaries have not risen to meet the massive inflation of recent years.

“These are very difficult times. Our musicians never received a good salary, and now that everything has become 10 or 50 times as expensive as it used to be, we have had some musicians who have left--not many, but some--and it’s very difficult to find replacements.”

When the orchestra’s new concert hall was nearing completion last year, Kakhidze reached into his earnings from abroad and produced sufficient hard currency--British pounds sterling--to provide some of the interior furnishings when the government funding ran out.

As Georgia and the rest of the former Soviet Union attempt to convert to a market economy, arts organizations, long accustomed to complete government subsidy, are learning to adopt Western methods of financing.

“After we opened our new concert hall, we organized a patrons of music association. We have very many music lovers who, we hope, would like to be part of that club of patrons and are ready to provide a large contribution in order to enhance the musical world in our country.”

Despite Georgia’s political instability and the bloodshed over former President Zviad Gamsakhurdia’s removal, Kakhidze is confident that his countrymen will return to more civilized behavior. Just last week, President Bush recognized the Republic of Georgia under the new leadership of former Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze.

“From a distance, it appears that Georgians are just killing each other,” Kakhidze said. “But, in truth, the battle is being fought for justice and real democracy. I’m confident that, if there is some assistance from the West, in the near future it will all come together there. It cannot be that a country of such high cultural heritage would not be able to define the correct path in contemporary civilization.”

CRITIC’S CHOICE

TOP CELLIST YO-YO MA AT CIVIC THEATRE

There is little agreement among music lovers who attempt to rank the current crop of cello virtuosi. But Yo-Yo Ma, a performer who encompasses both passion and intellect, is at or near the top of everyone’s list.

Accompanied by pianist Jeffrey Kahane, Ma will offer Beethoven’s A Major Sonata, Op. 69, and Prokofiev’s C Major Sonata, Op. 119, at 8 p.m. Thursday at Civic Theatre. Freshening the usual cello repertory, Ma will play his own transcription of Bernstein’s Clarinet Concerto and Gershwin’s Three Piano Preludes.