MUSIC REVIEW : Muscovites Make ‘Em Wanna Shout

Seeing and hearing an audience stand and yell with approval for a performance of a middle-20th-Century symphony surprises and gratifies. And one by Dmitri Shostakovich, no less.

The Sunday afternoon audience at Copley Symphony Hall for the concert by the Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra seemed eager to show its appreciation. Not only did Shostakovich’s epic Symphony No. 10 thrill them at the program’s close, but before intermission they gave guest conductor Jansoug Kakhidze and the 100 or so Russian musicians a standing ovation for Dvorak’s much-loved “New World” Symphony (No. 9).

The Moscow Philharmonic was originally scheduled to perform at 8 p.m., but the concert was moved up to 2 p.m. to accommodate the orchestra’s return flight to Moscow on Sunday, ending a 30-day, 20-city tour.

But the exhausting schedule seems not to have wearied the tall and silver-haired Kakhidze, who is the chief conductor of the State Symphonic Orchestra of Georgia.

His demonstrative podium presence encouraged a balanced and often prodigious sound from the musicians. The music, however excitingly loud, was always legible. And if not perfectly executed at times (clear, unison attacks weren’t always achieved and some important closures for full orchestra were a little loose-ended), the music was passionately dispatched. The brimming projection of the string section, which numbered a satisfying 75 players, even had to be held in check at times.

The concert’s well-conceived program revealed a thread of folk influences through three European composers’ works.

Opening with the overture to Carl Maria von Weber’s last work, the early German Romanticist opera “Oberon” (1826), subtitled “Or the Elf King’s Oath,” the orchestra moved, wistfully and swiftly, through the elf king’s bower to the harem of Caliph, into the storm, through the pleasure grounds of the Emir and finally to the golden salon of the kiosk of Roshana. Though such fairy-tale settings are broadly implied in this music, later musical eras better explored such exotica with mesmerizing fluidity and instrumental colors.

Dvorak’s hyper-familiar E minor symphony “From the New World” is nearing 100 years old. Replete with the syncopated rhythms and lyricism of folk melodies (some Czech, some American), with sad and nostalgic themes, and with a lustrous and sprightly third movement and dazzling final movement, this symphony has been popular since its first performance in New York in 1893. Kakhidze was best at cranking up the intensity in the final two movements Sunday but less able to hide some unattractive seams between melodic patches, notably in the second movement, when transitions were slow to the point of fraying.

The mighty Shostakovich Tenth (1954) followed, also making heavy solo demand on the woodwinds. The orchestra as a whole appeared most comfortably in full form for this Russian masterwork written after Stalin’s death and some consequent lightening of official control over Soviet arts.

An intriguing work compositionally, it is also viscerally sensational for the way its eeriness contrasts with infectious propulsive rhythms. The Moscow Philharmonic seemed especially suited to the orchestration, not merely for the powerful presence and agility of the strings, but for the performance of ingeniously written phrases that “call” between and within sections. Oddly dark duets for flute and piccolo, or near-sweet ones for two bassoons, two clarinets and so on, contrast with rousing snare drums, punctuations of a tambourine and even the discreet use of a gong.

Kakhidze gave the symphony a big, rich reading, never letting it sag. The sound brought the audience to its feet to shout for more.