Kirov Orchestra Pulls Off a Vivid Tug of War

The mighty and tightly packed Kirov Orchestra could easily have overwhelmed everyone in the 750-seat Irvine Barclay Theatre in its four-part program there Monday. But conductor Valery Gergiev knew how to turn every spot into the best seat in the house.

After all, he had kept the orchestra from swamping world-class singers in a Wagner program Sunday at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. This would be a piece of cake.

Or maybe more like hanging 10 on a tidal wave.

Gergiev opened the program with a vivid account of the bracing Suite from Prokofiev’s “The Love for Three Oranges” and followed it with an electrifying performance of Rachmaninoff’s “Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini.”

Vladimir Feltsman was the brilliant soloist, reveling in virtuosic details and myriad colors. His rapport with Gergiev was tight and sympathetic.

The orchestra played at the highest level, of course, with Gergiev’s genius showing in how he constantly re-energized it.

Conceptually things got a lot more interesting in the two works played after intermission, however.

In the Overture to “Tannhauser,” Wagner makes the sacred trump the profane by depicting spiritual intoxication as even more sensuous than delirium of the nerves. Gergiev had the doors of heaven just about to open.

But his programming was sly. Stripped of its religious ethos and restraint at mid-century, Wagner’s sound-world became Hitler’s political soundtrack. Shostakovich wrote his Symphony No. 9, which followed, closing the program, to commemorate the defeat of Hitler’s Germany in the Second World War.

Shostakovich’s world isn’t as simple as Wagner’s two polarities. The Ninth Symphony thumbs its nose at big, empty public-minded declarations, depicts huge ominous forces still at work in the world and, in the heart-stopping Largo, laments the mountains of dead.

Igor Gorbunov had the privilege of playing Shostakovich’s profound bassoon solo, and he made the most of it. And the conductor’s insights into the work’s grotesquerie were apparently unlimited.

The life force that ends the piece is mundane but far more reliable and accessible than Wagner’s heaven-storming transformations.

Gergiev led the Prelude to the Third Act of “Lohengrin” as the single encore, returning us to Wagner’s lofty excitement and proving perhaps that we can have it all.