Lidia Sek
Soprano Mary Mackenzie
Dmitri Shostakovich wrote 15 symphonies, and several of them are performed regularly. No. 14, however, is rarely performed, and that’s the one that Maestro Andrew Sewell decided to tackle for the final concert of the Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra season.
The decision is yet another example of Sewell’s commitment to introducing Madison audiences to unfamiliar music. The piece is unusual, too, in that it calls for two singers — soprano and bass — with an orchestra consisting of only strings with percussion. As a song-symphony, it echoes slightly Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde, but with more unified rationale. The source material was 11 poems by four different authors (Federico García Lorca, Guillaume Apollinaire, Wilhelm Küchelbecher and Ranier Maria Rilke). Each conveys protest — against death, oppression and tyranny. Shostakovich set them all in Russian translations.
Soprano Mary Mackenzie started out in Madison, but has built a splendid international career. Hers is a voice of opulently operatic power and projection. Bass Timothy Jones has a rather more bland voice, and is lacking in the low range.
Sewell did not mention, in opening comments, that the performance was sung in German translation. It took a few moments to be sure of that: Neither singer showed good diction. Yet, the vocal writing is more declamatory than lyrical, so the words do matter. The full German text and English translation were wisely provided in the program, but in tiny typography, which was almost impossible to read. (From where I sat, I could not see anyone in the audience following the words, despite such good intentions.) Thus, the sabotaging of words cheated the audience and did serious injustice to the composer’s intentions.
The positive side was that the orchestral dimension was projected with wonderful precision. Sewell had his strings, in their varied combinations, convey the subtleties and nuances the composer intended, and proper punch was given by the battery of bangables that Shostakovich used so provocatively. All the sadder that the textual dimensions were so badly neglected.
After a dark and demanding first part of the program, the second half brought charming Gallic relief in the form of two miniature suites each with keyboard origins. From his collection of piano duets called Jeux d’enfants (Children’s Games), Georges Bizet orchestrated five of them as a set. And, from Claude Debussy’s Petite Suite for piano, his colleague Henri Busser created a delicious orchestral suite. Both suites perfectly suited the WCO’s size and style, providing a fitting climax for a wide-ranging concert.
