Frankly Music’s Tribute to Shostakovich

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Frankly Music - Shostakovich

Frank Almond, Steven Honigberg and Winston Choi perform in 'A Commemoration of Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975)' with Frankly Music.

Schwan Concert Hall at Wisconsin Lutheran College is probably Milwaukee’s best venue for chamber music. Modern, comfortable, just the right size. It’s great to have a high-quality series like Frankly Music inhabiting the space.

Monday’s concert commemorated the 50th anniversary of Dmitri Shostakovich’s death. While not on the exact date, a tribute to Shostakovich is more than welcome. His music has been described as a soundtrack to the dark side of the 20th century, with often painfully vivid portrayals of political oppression and war.

Any number of great chamber works could have been programmed for the occasion, but Frank Almond made the intriguing choice to pair the Eighth String Quartet (perhaps Shostakovich’s most personal work) with his Op. 8 Piano Trio, dating from his student days as Leningrad Conservatory. Hearing early and mature Shostakovich on the same program can be a melancholy experience, as the bright-eyed quirk of the young composer gives way to anxiety and desolation.

But first, Rachmaninoff’s own first piano trio. Frank Almond gave generous, insightful comments at the outset that connected the two trios as student pieces and placed them in the context of Russian musical history. Cellist Steven Honigberg and pianist Winston Choi joined Almond for the performance. Choi approached this music with a grand Romantic sensibility, with full tone and impressive execution of Rachmaninoff’s cascading arpeggios. Overall, I sensed some disagreement in the ensemble. Both Honigberg and Choi occasionally employed some interpretive forward motion that read to me as rushing. I agree that this music can drag if not given momentum, but this elegiac piece (Rachmaninoff called it “trio elegaique”!) felt too restless. However, I very much enjoyed the muted strings during the funeral march section at the end. Both Almond and Honigberg got it just right.

Chilled-out Elegance

In the Shostakovich trio, the players found a nice chilled-out elegance in the opening material. Once the pace picked up, some of the string playing got a bit scrappy. The Tchaikovsky-esque lyrical theme, first announced in the cello’s high range, was given an understated reading by Honigberg. Almond’s own iteration of the theme at a later point sounded pleasingly thick in the medium/low range of the violin. The group wrapped up the coda with excitement.

After intermission, Almond returned to give more notes about the quartet. His love and understanding for the music were clear; he described it as “the closest you get to a musical autobiography” and asserted that “the entire human experience is in this piece…works like this are the reason why we play chamber music.” After a thorough exploration of the political and biographical context of the music, Almond walked offstage and we were left with several minutes of suspense before the performance. Each pause of dead time this evening seemed longer than the last, and I felt the audience becoming restless here. It was a good restlessness; Frank’s little seminar had us hyped!

Shostakovich’s Eighth String Quartet proved to be more than worth the wait. With guests Charlene Kluegel and Toby Appel joining as second violinist and violist, respectively, the ensemble gave a powerful performance of this masterwork. The slow opening movement was sensitively played, though a chorus of coughing and cough drop wrapper-opening distracted from the effect. Why do people’s throats always have to dry out during quiet moments? The second movement was intense, committed, everyone digging in. But the real standout in this performance was the central waltz. The musicians created some kind of magic, making the music more ghostly and barely-there than I’d ever heard. Really haunting. Almond contributed some great intense accents in the B section of the theme. Honigberg was excellent in the later quiet cello melody over wispy violins.

Knock on the Door

The fourth movement famously contains musical imagery of the KGB knocking on the doors of political dissidents. In a live performance, the visual of a lone violin holding notes while the other three players knock-knock-knock is a striking image of the individual vs. the state. As wild as it is to write this, for the first time I was able to connect that era of forcible arrests with current news in my own country. The slower music after the knocking featured some deeply expressive work from Kluegel. The final movement, somber and wise, gave Toby Appel some lyrical highlights as well.

I would have been fine with ending the concert there and letting Shostakovich’s musical autobiography resonate as a cautionary tale in this current political environment, but Almond and the group decided to end on a lighter note with an arrangement of Shostakovich’s “Tahiti Trot,” itself an arrangement of the song “Tea for Two.” Paul Beck, general manager of Frankly Music, concocted this particular setting and contributed some flair on tambourine.

This was a satisfying concert, with Frankly Music’s usual assemblage of talented guests and fine programming. Hopefully not the only Shostakovich celebration I’ll hear this year. His legacy will always be relevant.