Saturday, April 5, 2025
8:00 PM
Dima Slobodeniouk leads three works, all notable for their proximity to wartime. Edward Elgar’s Violin Concerto can be seen in retrospect as an idyllic calm before the storm of World War I. Adolphus Hailstork’s Lachrymosa: 1919 explores the Red Summer of 1919, a deadly backlash against Black American prosperity in the wake of the war. Stravinsky’s Symphony in Three Movements was the composer’s dark reaction to the universal devastation of World War II.
Dima Slobodeniouk, conductor
Frank Peter Zimmermann, violin
Adolphus HAILSTORK Lachrymosa: 1919
Igor STRAVINSKY Symphony in Three Movements
Edward ELGAR Violin Concerto
This broadcast is no longer available on demand.
In a preview of this program, conductor Dima Slobodeniouk describes the emotional power of Hailstork's Lachrymosa: 1919, the extreme shift in energy among the different works on the program and the audience's role in facilitating that energy, and the qualities Frank Peter Zimmermann brings to Elgar's Violin Concerto. To listen, use the player above and read the transcript below.
TRANSCRIPT:
Brian McCreath This program. Three pieces that are so different from each other. Adolphus Hailstork's "Lachrymosa: 1919." Not a piece that I had known before, but what a gorgeous, beautiful, moving piece of music. Is it one that you're going to be conducting for the first time, or is it also—
Dima Slobodeniouk Yes, and I'm super happy about it.
Brian McCreath Tell me about your introduction to it and what you've learned about it so far.
Dima Slobodeniouk I found it at some point just by searching for new music. Nowadays, we have lots of great sources to do that, and it's very interesting. It's like a journey. You really open new worlds for yourself. And this one, it's so sincere, this piece. So it just talks to you immediately. And in a way, maybe it's some kind of bridge from the previous week, the previous program. Somehow it just connects. And yeah, I'm so happy to do it here for the first time.
Brian McCreath It's a beautiful piece that has this very dark inspiration: the riots and massacres of African Americans in 1919. And yet, as you approach it in front of the orchestra, you have a score with notes on it, and that's how you're dealing with it. But tell me whether that story and that background has a way of infiltrating your approach to it.
Dima Slobodeniouk Always. Always, of course. I don't like to bring too much of a theoretical aspect to it, but people who are involved in performing a piece like this, they should be aware of this. It makes perfect sense and, well, we should know the history and not forget it.
Brian McCreath Absolutely. So the next piece on the program seems to be from a completely different world by Stravinsky, the "Symphony in Three Movements." And it's one that you've done in many venues before and you've recorded it. So you clearly have a deep attraction to this language of Stravinsky, this neoclassical language. So tell me about that and what this piece means for you.
Dima Slobodeniouk Well, talking about content, that was a reaction to the Second World War. A strong one. It feels like it's coming at you, this piece, from the very beginning. It's really openly... almost aggressive. And at the same time, neoclassical, which is a weird combination. But he somehow makes it very natural. For [Stravinsky], in that period, there was a lot of music in that [style]. So it's just a means of expression for him. And he manages to make it dramatic, even being neoclassical. You know, it's not ballet music, or it's not even, for example, "Apollon Musagète," which is also neoclassical. This one is in a very different way. And also the orchestration and the combination of instruments—having piano, for example, in a very, very important role in the piece—it's almost like a concerto for orchestra, in fact. It's relatively short for being a substantial orchestral piece, but this is one of the cornerstones in 20th century orchestra writing, just like Bartok's Concerto for Orchestra was. This is just from the slightly another perspective. But the orchestra writing definitely evolved through this piece also for other composers.
Brian McCreath And when you have an orchestra that is first playing this beautiful, Hailstork, flowing kind of piece, very filled with emotion, and then you're asking these players to kind of reconstitute in a couple of minutes on the stage with the added instruments, and then come straight into this other world that Stravinsky builds, how much of a shift is that in the way that performers would have to recalibrate their own mind?
Dima Slobodeniouk Oh, a lot. A lot, of course. And that is probably also something which is demanded within the pieces. Sometimes you have that change within one piece. You don't even get to, kind of, reorganize yourself on stage. And that's something we don't rehearse, really. That just happens. And that's where the aspect of interacting with the audience comes. Because the energy you need for the Hailstork and for the Stravinsky are equally strong energies. You need a lot of energy. In fact, for a slow, quiet piece, you sometimes need more energy than for the loud ones or quick ones. But this is how we go on stage, and we are together in a social happening with the audience. And that helps us. That's why we need live music. That's way this cannot be happening only through recordings or something.
Brian McCreath That's so interesting though because, I mean, yes, it's a topic that musicians talk about: the energy that comes from the audience. But to hear you describe the different kinds of energy that you feel with different kinds of pieces is also really fascinating. It's a little bit more specific than maybe some of us are thinking.
Dima Slobodeniouk Oh it's very specific. In fact, that's the reason why we do this. I, as a performer, I don't know if I could do this if there was no audience. No one would because we are doing it for the audience.
Brian McCreath Well, we had to experiment with that during the pandemic, didn't we?
Dima Slobodeniouk Exactly.
Brian McCreath And it was really hard.
Dima Slobodeniouk And that was really hard. And lots of right questions were placed: now we had to do it like this, and how does it feel? And in most of the cases, it really empties you. You don't get anything back. You play in front of camera, try to do the best you can, but the social aspect is missing. And you know, if you think of our lives nowadays, we think we are in touch with each other all the time. We are like all the times in touch with everyone, yeah? But at the same time, with no one. And the conversation you would have over a digital means of, let's say, through social media, that's not the same conversation. Many times, you would not say things you would say in person. It's the same with music. You don't perform the same way without the social aspect of it. And I think for audiences, that is one of the last frontiers, the last islands where people can experience things together in the same space. We can't let that disappear. It's so precious.
Brian McCreath It is. Tell me about the soloist in Elgar's violin concerto, Frank Peter Zimmerman. Someone you've worked with before?
Dima Slobodeniouk Oh, a lot. Yeah.
Brian McCreath It's been a little while since he's played in Boston. How do you describe, if you can even put words to it, what Frank Peter Zimmerman brings to any piece, but especially this long, really involved, beautiful, romantic piece?
Dima Slobodeniouk Absolutely. Well, first of all, Frank Peter is, I think, one of the most interesting musicians I have ever met.
Brian McCreath Wow.
Dima Slobodeniouk And he's... I thinks for this piece... probably, I don't know. We have performed this piece quite a lot with him. And only this year we have performed it already twice. And I can't really imagine at the moment anyone I would feel so in the same boat in terms of approaching this piece, as I feel with him. He's very particular about the text, the material, so he wants to bring it as close to what Elgar writes. And I think that's the only way a piece like this can work.
You know, there is a tendency many times to overdo Romantic [era] music. What I mean is that, you know, when it's already romantic, you make it even more romantic. It's just something which creates like a snowball and then other performers start imitating that. Let's say Tchaikovsky is often done like a very, thick cake with lots of cream on it. [McCreath laughs] And it's actually, essentially, very classical music, which is in a way more simple, a bit more introverted, and still super powerful. The same with a concerto like this. If you keep adding stuff on top of it, it doesn't work anymore. This is basically a symphony with a solo violin. It's a very orchestral piece, also very difficult for the orchestra. It's very demanding for both the soloists and the orchestra. So sticking to the text is great. So then theres this like pure expression, lots of very heartwarming, very emotional, quiet moments. It has a long cadenza in the end, in the third moment, which feels like everything we have played in the last 40 minutes or 45 minutes just disappeared and there is only one violin just going through its thoughts with a very gentle arpeggiato and pizzicato. And it's like a rain in the orchestra. It's amazing. It goes from everything to almost nothing.
Brian McCreath It's almost an arc from the beginning of the concert with Arvo Pärt to the end of the concert with the end of the Elgar. And also it's interesting to me that you have these two programs, one of which is two pieces put together, that really do mean something to each other. That are really going to interact in our ears. And then this other program that is a complete change of pace with every transition, it seems. But I don't know if there's more to say about the the Hailstork, Stravinsky, Elgar, that there's connections among those pieces. It seems more like the case of taking one thing and then moving into something completely different and then another completely different thing after that.
Dima Slobodeniouk I think of it more like a laboratory where you place three, four different cells together and see what happens, how they start growing and interacting. Sometimes these things are not to be explained, but just to see how nature takes it further. You know, sometimes programs look great on paper, but they don't really work on practice, and the other way around. I think in this case, I hope it's both.
Brian McCreath I think so. [Slobodeniouk laughs] No, I love the way you just put it. No need to explain. Just experience it.
Dima Slobodeniouk Yeah. Exactly. It's stronger that way, because each listener experiences it in his or her own way. And that should be left blank, as "Tabula Rasa." (Slobodeniouk chuckles]
Brian McCreath Nice. Dima Slobodeniouk, it's always just such a great thing to talk to you. I love talking to you about all this, whether we're explaining anything or just experiencing, it's just really great to talk with you and I appreciate your time today.
Dima Slobodeniouk I appreciate it. Thank you so much, Brian.