ひと月前の感想になりますが・・・
【ショスタコーヴィチ／弦楽四重奏のための2つの小品（I エレジー／II ポルカ）※開演前の室内楽】
【ショスタコーヴィチ／交響曲 第8番 ハ短調 作品65】
ショスタコーヴィチの８番も、ジャナンドレア・ノセダの指揮も、聴くのは初めて。
はじめに。
８番、いい曲だなぁ。。。
なぜあの１楽章の後にあの２楽章？その後にあの３楽章？そしてあの４、５楽章・・・
突然のんきな音が聴こえて来たり、なのにあのシリアスなフィナーレだったり。
３楽章は聴いていてすごく楽しい＆興奮する。でも戦争的な観点から聴くと、とても怖い…。この曲、ニールセンの５番にもちょっと似てますね。
終楽章のラストは、私には天に上った死者達の魂への追悼としか聴こえません。
とはいえムラヴィンスキーやゲルギエフの演奏で予習していた私にとって、今回のノセダの演奏はスッキリ系で、前日にＣプロ１日目の演奏をラジオで聴いたときは正直なところその良さが全くわかりませんでした。
聴きながら眠気が襲ってきた。
でも初めからそういう系の演奏だという前知識をもって聴いたせいもあると思うけど、実際に会場で２日目の生演奏を聴いたら、ラジオとは全然印象が違い、感動しました。
スッキリ系はスッキリ系なのだけど、だから軽いというわけでは全くなく、その凄みのようなものを感じた。
一見客観的な演奏に聴こえるけれど、その奥に隠れた主観的な凄みを感じさせるというか。あるいは客観的でえあるがゆえの凄みを感じさせるというか。
ノセダがロシアと深い繋がりがあるがゆえの独特な空気を感じたというか。
もちろん今の世界情勢の中なので、こちら側にも先入観があったことは否定できないけれど。
いずれにしても、「ただのスッキリ系の演奏」ではなかったです。少なくとも私の耳には。
Ｎ響も緊張感たっぷりの演奏を聴かせてくれました。
知人は「真面目すぎる」と苦笑していて、その感想も確かにそのとおりでよく理解できるのだけれども、全体的な私の感想としては上記のとおりでした。
あと、キッチリスッキリ系の演奏だったためか、オーケストレーションの色彩感がすごく鮮やかに感じられました。
ショスタコーヴィチの曲ってこんなに美しい色が見えるのか、と初めて感じた。
イタリア人指揮者のノセダだったからかもしれません。
ただこれについては「ショスタコーヴィチなのに色彩感が鮮やかすぎる」という感想もＳＮＳで見かけて、なるほどそういう感じ方もあるか、とも。個人的にはこの色彩感、とても興味深かったですし、感動しました。
※LSO CONDUCTOR GIANANDREA NOSEDA ON HIS PASSION FOR RUSSIAN CULTURE（26/03/2019）
How did you develop this sensibility and knowledge of the music in your student years? I know that you have studied in Italy – so was there a special approach to musical education there?
The main lesson I learned when I was a student in Sienna, studying with Valery Gergiev when he came to visit our Academy was to pay attention to the details and understand how even minor details change the perception of the musical phrase. Although not always serious in private lifes, in music we, musicians, take things seriously, we want to know and to study.
Both for Italians and for Russians it is important to be connected with our musical tradition as well as literature and poetry. In Italy there are such giants as Dante, Michelangelo, Raphael, Titian, Boccaccio, Petrarch, Manzoni – there are so many. One could draw parallels with Russia – Pushkin, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy in the 19thcentury, Bulgakov, Akhmatova in the 20thcentury, then also all the composers – Mussorgsky, Stravinsky, Shostakovich, Stravinsky, Scriabin – what a heritage. This knowledge established the foundation, makes you understand your roots, allows you to flourish and to blossom. It is like a tree – if you are connected to the earth, you can shoot into the sky standing on the shoulders of giants.
Could you speak about your lessons with Valery Gergiev?
He taught us in Accademia Chigiana in summer 1993. He taught me the sensitivity to the sound. I remember he said that I had very eloquent and rhythmic hands. He said that I should concentrate on imagining the sound, understand what kind of sound you want, what kind of colour, what kind of articulation, which is the most important note in the first fifty bars of this piece and who is playing it. He always pushed students to the limit for us to understand these things. For example, you do Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, and it is already difficult, but then you work on Shostakovich’s symphonies, and it becomes even more challenging to understand: what is the most important note in this section? what is the most important phrase? what is the key moment that enlightens the fragment? Gergiev pushed me to look for answers to these questions.
・・・
It is interesting that Shostakovich, along with Verdi and Beethoven, was the composer who could change the society he was living in. Other composers were fantastic, but they could not do it. Verdi was born in Italy in 1813, and he died in 1901 in a completely different Italy, and he actually contributed to the change of the country. It was the same for Beethoven – Napoleon, the Vienna Congress, the Restoration – through his art he changed the state of contemporary world. And it is true for Shostakovich – I think without him glasnost’ and perestroika would have happened in a different way. Shostakovich suffered during Stalin’s era – he was marked as a modernist composer, he was trying to comply to the rules of the Soviet state to survive during Stalin’s era and after his death you would think he could live as he wanted. But in fact, it was also a difficult time for him, and he was already old – and he was looking back at the society he lived in before and compared it to the society he was living in then. His music is about the relationship between the artist and the society, the rules of the society, big philosophical questions – why death, why life, why one has to compose music, what is it to be an artist in his time. And little by little he changed the society – from the dictatorship to a new era. Whatever you do to change the status quo is good for the future. Things developed – probably not the way he wanted, but he contributed to the change. Even nowadays we are going through a difficult time as a society, and it might be compared (figuratively) to the time between 1936 to 1953 (Stalin’s death) that Shostakovich lived in. That time imposed the same kind of questions we ask today – where do I go? Where I should go? I don’t know, but I try here and there. I try to be the Russian composer who celebrates great victories, but I also try to develop there revolutionary ideas of freedom and self-expression.
But why Shostakovich specifically? Why not Prokofiev, for instance?
I would do Prokofiev, too. But Shostakovich, after Beethoven and Mahler, is the biggest symphonist. Beethoven wrote 9 symphonies, Mahler – 9 symphonies, Shostakovich – 15. It is a massive output. If you want to trace what he wanted to say, you need to start from when he was young to his late symphonies and explore his huge world encompassing 20thcentury which was very dramatic and had two World Wars and several dictatorships.
・・・
Shostakovich pushes my imagination to the limit. The Eighth is written like no other, it is not in the sonata form, it is more like a suite with seven moments. It is not perfect in terms of structure, but in terms of imagination it is one of the most innovative and advanced works of Shostakovich. Architecturally some other symphonies are more secure, but sometimes in things that are not perfect there is more power. This symphony goes from the massive sound to nothing, from the most extreme phrase and articulations to some visionary elements and to complete dissolution.
※Interview: A Conversation with Gianandrea Noseda, Music Director of the National Symphony Orchestra（March 30, 2018）
アンドリュー・ロイド・ウェバーってショスタコーヴィチとプロコフィエフの大ファンだったんですね
彼の音楽って「クラシックぽいポップ」のイメージだったけれど、実は「ポップぽいクラシック」と捉えてもいいのかも。そもそもクラシックとは何ぞや？という話でもありますけど。
I spent roughly 10 years as the principal guest conductor at the Mariinsky Theatre. [Legendary Russian conductor] Valery Gergiev at first asked me to be responsible for the Italian repertoire there. But being there in St. Petersburg, you cannot avoid conducting another repertoire. And for me, I was very curious to touch, and to conduct with my own hands, Boris Godunov [by Modest Mussorgsky], Eugene Onegin, Queen of Spades [both by Tchaikovsky], and a little bit less-known repertoire like Prokofiev’s Betrothal in a Monastery and War and Peace. So while I was doing Italian opera, I was asked to do Queen of Spades, I was asked to do Boris, and I did it in the right place, where everybody was “breathing the Boris language.” I mean the Mussorgsky language, the Tchaikovsky language.
I’ve always been passionate about Russian literature, so I’ve always been reading Pushkin, Dostoevsky, and Tolstoy. And Chekhov, Bulgakov, and many others. It was sort of my personal love of that culture. And so my debut at the Met was War and Peace by Prokofiev, without rehearsals …
・・・
I’ll tell you a small story. When I arrived in Russia in 1997, I thought Prokofiev was a genius and Shostakovich was [just] a great composer. As I started to live there, I perceived the opposite – the Russians consider Shostakovich a genius and Prokofiev a great composer. I thought, what’s wrong with me, or with that? But from the Russian perspective, Prokofiev was seen as someone who left Russia and came back. While Shostakovich always lived there, even after living through some tough, tough years. That’s why they probably felt Shostakovich closer to their souls.
For myself, after 10 years of going there regularly, I think both are geniuses!
Interview with Gianandrea Noseda
Valery Gergiev introduces Shostakovich Symphony No 8
