South Florida Classical Review

Sheku Kanneh-Mason performed Shostakovich’s Cello Concerto No. 1 with Stéphane Denève and the New World Symphony Saturday night. Photo: Mahaneela

A performance by a gifted, charismatic cellist and a revelatory reading of a French classic highlighted artistic director Stéphane Denève’s final major podium appearance of the season with the New World Symphony Saturday night. (Denève will take part in the orchestral academy’s annual side by side concert with area students next Saturday.) The unique rapport between conductor and ensemble was evident throughout the evening, producing consistently distinguished music-making at New World Center.

Dmitri Shostakovich conceived his Cello Concerto No. 1 in E-flat Major in 1959 for celebrated friend and colleague Mstislav Rostropovich. The score alternates biting sarcasm with a deep poignancy and despair that is typical of the composer’s later works. It is a  challenge to any soloist who dares to fill Rostropovich’s musical shoes. 

Sheku Kanneh-Mason met the concerto’s technical demands on their own terms and captured the soulful underpinnings beneath the music’s showy surface. Less muscular and overtly flashy than Rostropovich’s iteration, the British cellist brought an eloquence of spirit and flawless technique to his reading. He received stellar support from Denève and the orchestral contingent.

Kanneh-Mason’s ample dark-tinged sonority and crisp articulation at the outset of the Allegretto captured the sardonic quality of Shostakovich’s opening movement. His intonation was secure even in the instrument’s highest and lowest reaches. 

The second movement Moderato finds Shostakovich in his most distinctively Russian voice. The movement’s almost dirge-like aura seems to spring from the country’s soil and ravages of history. Kanneh-Mason phrased its elongated patterns with grave poignancy. The section in which a celesta plays over the cello’s soft lines emerged eerie and magical, skillfully contoured and balanced by the conductor.

In the lengthy solo cadenza of the third movement, Kanneh-Mason’s agility and depth of tone was matched by impressive expressive command, fully realizing the music’s tragic subtext. Ascending to a spot on high D, he launched the Allegro con moto finale at a rapid-fire pace. That precision and clarity brought the concerto to a stunning finish. 

Kanneh-Mason is superb musician and potential superstar. Denève and the ensemble were full partners, bringing out the nervous intensity and inner tragedy of Shostakovich’s writing to potent effect. The prominent solo horn part was played with sonorous beauty and clean articulation.

The concert opened with a brief suite from The Book Thief by John Williams. For the 2013 film about a young girl’s survival during the Holocaust, Williams created a score that was haunting and uncharacteristically gentle— more like Ennio Morricone (Cinema Paradiso, The Mission) than the Williams of Star Wars and Indiana Jones fame. Denève conjured up the distinctive Hollywood studio sound from the orchestra, the winds particularly excellent.

Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique is often played as a pure orchestral showpiece, all thunder and flash. To conclude the concert, Denève offered a different viewpoint. His was a connoisseur’s Berlioz, marked by refinement, nuanced musicality and attention to detail and subtleties. When called for, he could unleash the orchestra’s full power but he held it in abeyance for the climactic moments. The result was a performance that made one realize anew the inspiration of Berlioz’s melodic invention and the singular inventiveness of his orchestration.

Strings were smooth and glistening in the opening “Reveries-Passions.”  The “idée fixe” motif that recurs throughout the piece was shaped with restraint, its reappearances all the more effective for lack of initial overkill. Denève made every instrumental texture audible and commanded a wide panoply of dynamics and tonal colors. 

With the two harps placed on opposite sides of the ensemble, the waltz of “Un bal” had spring in its pulse and Gallic elegance without an excess of sugar. Denève encompassed the softer side of Berlioz for “Scene in the Country,”the gorgeous English horn solos and claps of thunder from the timpani wonderfully detailed. Five percussionists and finely blended brass gave full measure to “March to the Scaffold.” 

From the initial rumbles of the lower strings, “Dream of the Witch’s Sabbath” was riveting. The main motif emerged almost as a caricature as played with incisive energy by the stellar winds. The offstage bells cast a sinister aura, bolstered by the two tubas intoning the dies irae. A hair raising climax capped a performance marked by perfectly judged tempos and clarity of inner voicing. The players were in top form throughout.

Denève’s ambitious programming and eloquent interpretations have made for a rewarding season and his intelligent approach to a repertoire standard was an outstanding coda.

Edward Gardner conducts the New World Symphony in Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra and Dvořák’s Violin Concerto with Gil Shaham. Molly Turner conducts Thea Musgrave’s Song of the Enchantress. Concerts take place  7:30 p.m. May 2 at the Kravis Center in West Palm Beach and 7:30 p.m. May 3 and 2 p.m. May 4 at the New World Center in Miami Beach. nws.edu

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