ConcertPulse
Symphoniker Hamburg / Josef Špaček / Jiří Rožeň
Laeiszhalle, Großer Saal (Hamburg)
There’s no better way of facing difficult days than with a refreshing Rossini overture! Almost every one of them begins slowly, with many shuffling lazily at the start. Yet the overture to his »William Tell«, for example, unleashes so much energy after a few minutes that it’s almost impossible not to move to the music. Dmitri Shostakovich’s First Cello Concerto also contains plenty of dynamism, but it’s full of bitterness and sarcasm. Mischa Maisky has been performing the work for many decades – and yet he still finds new ways of approaching the not inaccessible concerto. It’s a highly personal piece in which the composer inscribed his own name in musical letters. And it goes surprisingly well with Rossini! A few years later, in his final symphony, Shostakovich would quote that galloping main theme from the fast part of Rossini’s overture. An erratic, dance-like motif that goes perfectly with Beethoven’s rousing Seventh Symphony! A few years after it was written, one critic (who surely did not imagine his words would be one of our absolute favourites two hundred years later) wrote: »It consists of four movements of almost 1/4 hour each, thus making the whole at least 3/4 hour, and it is a veritable quodlibet of tragic, comic, serious and trivial ideas, which stray here and there without context, are repeated ad nauseam, and almost burst because of the excessive noise of the timpani.« Why don’t you tell us what you really think, my friend!
