Ingrid Jacoby, Sir Charles Mackerras, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra - Shostakovich and Ustvolskaya (2003) [SACD]

Galina Ustvolskaya’s music has been receiving increasing recognition over the past decade, the early Piano Concerto being 1 of her most frequently recorded works. The musical & personal connection between her & Shostakovich, as student/teacher, as colleagues, even as possible lovers, has also received a fair amount of attention. Shostakovich admired Ustvolskaya’s music; he even claimed to have been influenced by it. His well-documented quotation of 1 of her themes in his 5th Quartet & again in his Michelangelo Suite testifies to the teacher’s lifelong admiration for his former student. If Ustvolskaya’s youthful works bear the influence of Shostakovich, her mature works could not be more removed from it. She became a musical renegade of the 1st order, adopting a style that shuns almost every tradition of Western classical music. In the astringent, often forbidding manifestations of religious ardour her music came to embrace, listeners may find a disturbing yet fascinating universe.
Ustvolskaya’s Piano Concerto (1946) was written around the time of her post-graduate studies with Shostakovich. The influence of the teacher, as one might imagine, is virtually unavoidable. Immediately apparent are the similarities in scoring & textural treatment to Shostakovich’s 1st Piano Concerto. To some, the work’s principal motif, a heavily accented, 2 note figure, may recall the jagged notes that open Shostakovich’s 5th & 8th Symphonies. Despite these parallels, Ustvolskaya’s 1 movement concerto still manages to hold its own ground. It is a serious bravura work that shuns the playful shenanigans of its purported model. Alternating dramatic gestures & reflective passages, its seriousness of purpose reaches beyond its 15mins length. After a pensive central section, the return of the 2 note figure in the final section provides an overall sense of symmetry. In the finale, the obsessive repetition of the figure with hammering rhythms looks ahead to the severe aesthetic that Ustvolskaya would eventually adopt in her maturity.
On this debut SACD from Dutton Laboratories, Sir Charles Mackerras and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra accompany Ingrid Jacoby in piano concertos by Shostakovich and Galina Ustvolskaya. Ingrid Jacoby has performed throughout the USA and Europe, playing with many of the world’s leading orchestras and conductors. Her recordings include a highly-acclaimed Beethoven CD, voted Classic CD Top release for 1995, a 1998 Korngold World premiere solo piano album and a disc of Russian Piano Music which received the Gramophone Magazine’s “Critics’ Choice” in 2001 and three stars (an outstanding performance and recording in every way) in the 2002/3 Penguin Guide.
The youthful 1st Concerto, with its mischievous departures from concerto protocol offers pianists far more interpretive possibilities than the other Concertos – a fact that may explain its greater popularity over the years. The current set of performances reflects the wide range of interpretive possibilities available. It also demonstrates how the quality of the performance by the same artist with similar interpretive parameters can vary from one concerto to the next.
Ingrid Jacoby approaches the 1st Concerto almost as if it were a work from the 19th century. Rather than the rascal-on-the-run quality that many pianists bring to its playful pages, Jacoby tends toward the grand gesture, placing emphasis on the work’s classical foundations. Her keyboard style is of the high Romantic sort, noble & imposing, heavier in the touch & rather formal in execution – features that one might call Germanic. She manages to knit together the various episodes of the outer movements with a Teutonic discipline that is both elegant & good-humoured. While this can harness in some of the work’s devil daring, Jacoby’s performance shines with strength & intelligence. The inherent humour is not only preserved, but is cast in fresh, dignified tones. The seasoned listener may be caught pleasantly off guard. Note, for example in the last movement, the ceremonious pauses that start each phrase of the Rage Over a Lost Penny quote; & the honky-tonk insert in the concerto’s last page, which comes off sounding as if it were 1 of Brahms’ Hungarian Dances. In the slow movement, the sweeping gestures of the climax also acquire a Brahmsian grandeur. My only disappointment is with the weak presence of the trumpeter, who, whether by conductor’s, audio engineer’s, or soloist’s doing, should be heard more prominently. Even in the spotlight of his Ach du Lieber Augustine solo in the final movement, he sounds as if he’d rather be someplace else.
Ingrid Jacoby & Sir Charles Mackerras offer up a version that penetrates the work’s depths without being nearly so high strung. Jacoby brings out the concerto’s bold statements with menace & majesty, but with a greater sense of expanse. She also fleshes out the reflective moments with a lyrical warmth missing in the rather icy Serebryakov reading. Mackerras directs his string players sympathetically, savoring the slower sections & sparing no fury in the climactic sections. In the final pages, though the timpani strokes are thunderous, I still found myself missing the apocalyptic fury captured by the Serebryakovs. Yet throughout, Jacoby & Mackerras convey solidity & sensitivity – qualities that are spot on for this music.