L.A. Stage Too Small for Morality and Art

Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 13 is courageous, moral music. As much a cantata as a symphony, its five movements each set--for bass soloist, male choir and orchestra--a poem by Yevgeny Yevtushenko. The first movement is Shostakovich’s somber intoning of “Babi Yar,” the dissident poet’s famous evocation of Soviet anti-Semitism at a time, 1962, when such topics were possible but still dangerous to express publicly.

The poem “Babi Yar” concerns the slaughter of thousands of Jews by Nazis in 1941 outside Kiev. It and the symphony, which has also come to be known as “Babi Yar,” has meant a great deal to dissident Russians. Yet when Shostakovich’s work finally got a hearing in Los Angeles Thursday night for the first time, there was a steady trickle of patrons leaving the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion during the performance. It was well-played by the Los Angeles Philharmonic and competently led by Estonian conductor Eri Klas, so that surely was not cause for dissatisfaction.

Nor is it thinkable that the defectors were neo-Nazis or unreformed, ‘50s-style Soviet agents offended by the symphony’s political convictions--civilized society endorses the basic issues of good and evil that are unambiguously spelled out in the score. No, most likely concert-goers were turned off by Shostakovich’s preachy tone.

Music is not often successful when it tries to become a moral art. It is music’s nasty little truism that something like Wagner’s “Die Meistersinger” will always be loved, even though it has elements of blatant anti-Semitism scattered among its outpourings of humanity, while audiences will probably always walk out on Shostakovich’s 13th, vitamin-good though it be for us.

The fact is that Wagner’s opera is a great work and Shostakovich’s symphony is not, and morality cannot compete (it never could) with great art. Shostakovich lays it on with a shovel in the gloomy first movement, but he gets worse as he goes along. The second movement, “Humor,” contains the kind of irony in which every sarcasm is underlined, italicized and boldfaced. The last three movements are slow enough so that one is sure to feel the pain of never-ending suffering, but it soon enough feels like whining, although the composer pulls out of it at the end with some very beautiful solo string writing.

Klas led an absolutely firm performance. He is a conductor who values exact playing, a solid exposition of the music’s form. His dramatic gestures are big but without exaggeration. He might have been helped, however, by a more dramatic bass than Mikhail Kit, flown in from the Kirov Opera on short notice to replace an indisposed Aage Haugland. Kit is an understated singer, and he seemed uncomfortably swamped by the orchestra and the ringing National Male Choir of Estonia, but in the subdued music at the end he was eloquent.

That choir was the evening’s highlight in the first half of the program as it offered six examples of nationalist Estonian music by Mihkel Ludig, Eduard Tubin, Rudolf Tobias, Rudolf Tobias, Tuudur Vettik and Villem Kapp. Only Tubin has become known in the West, but all these composers--whose music ranged from late last century well into our own--had a certain distinctive quality. They favored unusual sound combinations and offbeat folk-derived harmonies and texts (Tubin’s “Two Islanders” concerns a headless hero).

The performances of these works were enthusiastic and winning. But, nice touch as they were, the two halves of the evening felt at odds. How much better it might have been to take the “Babi Yar” theme further and pair it with the ferocious orchestral piece of that name by Steve Martland, the uppity and controversial young British composer.

The Philharmonic made the Shostakovich further alienating by inviting actor Michael Laskin to read Yevtushenko’s poems before the movements of the symphony. Though an effective presence, Laskin missed the point by adopting a lofty, rabbinical tone. Yevtushenko, who read the poems himself recently before a New York Philharmonic performance of the symphony, was so much more effective in his Russian manner, since “Babi Yar,” in particular, is meant to convey the reaction of non-Jews to the plight of Jews as a symbol for a more universal persecution. And Shostakovich’s symphony needs all the right kind of help it can get on its rare outings.

* The Los Angeles Philharmonic, conducted by Eri Klas, repeats this program tonight at 8 and Sunday at 2:30 p.m. at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, Music Center, 135 N. Grand Ave., (213) 365-3500. $8-$60.