MUSIC REVIEW : A Shattering ‘Babi Yar’

The concert hall, some innocents claim, is a nice, not-so-quiet place for blissful escapism. Those innocents could not have been at Avery Fisher Hall last week.

Kurt Masur, the much-maligned Zubin Mehta’s much-celebrated successor at the New York Philharmonic, had assembled a shattering, unorthodox program with an unsettling theme: persecution.

The grim agenda began with the Philharmonic premiere of Bright Sheng’s “ ‘H’un’ (Lacerations): In Memoriam, 1966-1976,” an abstract response to Mao Zedong’s so-called “Cultural Revolution.”

The composer, born in Shanghai in 1955 and now a Seattle resident, joins many of his countrymen in preferring to think of the period in question as “The Ten-Year Calamity.” His essay, written for Gerard Schwarz and the New York Chamber Symphony in 1987, illustrates the point with chaotic dissonance that eventually gives way to serene contemplation.

After Sheng’s taut 20-minute tone-poem--half violent protest and half agonized lament--Masur and his obviously inspired ensemble turned to the oppression of post-Stalinist Russia. Having been music-director in Leipzig when the noble city was locked behind the walls of the eastern border, Masur knows something about that subject.

It was in Leipzig, back in 1974, that he led the German premiere of Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 13, also known as “Babi Yar.” The performance, reportedly a huge success, caused considerable trouble with the local communist authorities.

Inspired by the vividly idealistic poetry and brave social conscience of Yevgeny Yevtushenko, Shostakovich wrote the symphony in 1962. It served as an memorial to the 33,000 Jews massacred by the Nazis in a ravine outside Kiev. It also served, controversially in the Soviet Union, as a protest to the anti-Semitism prevalent behind the Iron Curtain. The Kremlin did not share the enthusiasm of the audience at the Moscow premiere.

Masur wanted to make the first, belated, New York Philharmonic performance of this powerful work a special occasion. (Eugene Ormandy had conducted the U.S. premiere in Philadelphia in 1970; Murry Sidlin introduced the symphony to Southern California in Long Beach five years ago.) Taking an artful liberty with conventional concert structure, not to mention conventional concert wisdom, the conductor invited Yevtushenko to read a few of his poems as a prelude to the musical translation of “Babi Yar.”

The poet’s brief appearance turned out to be a poignant coup de theatre Friday afternoon. Yevtushenko, a youthful 59, sprinted to the center-stage microphone wearing what looked like silky, toast-colored pajamas. Gesticulating wildly, he roared and whispered “The Loss”--a poem about Russia’s latest sorrows--in clearly articulated, thickly accented English. Then he added some wry “unexpected” musings on the subject of aging.

Finally, in tones that still mirrored the depths of pain and the heights of anger, he recited “Babi Yar,” in the vibrant original language. The audience could follow the text printed in the program.

Yevtushenko’s simple words are so forceful, and so musical, that one feared Shostakovich’s massive setting might come as an anticlimax. The fear turned out to be unfounded.

For all its primitive formulas, the score doesn’t merely accommodate the poetry. It provides emotional expansion. It adds expressive comment. Dealing with the evils of intolerance, it makes the specific seem universal.

“If I had been able to write music,” Yevtushenko has commented, “this is exactly the music I would have written. Shostakovich has combined seemingly incompatible things: Requiem, satire and sad lyricism.”

Masur and the New York Philharmonic rose incisively to every inherent challenge--the savage, thumping aggression, the shady, sardonic wit, the brash, heroic thunder, the wide-eyed, open-throated pathos and, ultimately, the eerie, otherworldly calm. It was a brilliant achievement, and one is happy to know that it will be documented on recordings.

Sergei Leiferkus, the sturdy baritone from Leningrad, is well-known at the San Francisco Opera, and he recently made a successful, unscheduled debut at the Met replacing Thomas Hampson as Eugene Onegin. He has long made a specialty of Shostakovich’s central solos, and sang them here with gutsy, broad-ranging, dark-edged fervor.

The basses of the New York Choral Artists, trained by Joseph Flummerfelt, sang the unison choral passages with resonance and bravado worthy of a great Cossack choir. But with better precision.

This visitor attended the second of four performances, incidentally, because the first, Thursday, coincided with the premiere of the new “Meistersinger” production at the Met. On the same night, a voice-lover might have attended a rare recital by Frederica von Stade at Carnegie Hall. For dance enthusiasts, the embarrassment of riches included a new Peter Martins-Wynton Marsalis collaboration at the City Ballet and an appearance by Molissa Fenley at the Joyce Theater.

New York still can be a wonderful town.