Kirov leads audience on wild ride aboard Shostakovich's fiery Fourth

Kirov Orchestra of St. Petersburg

at Symphony Center

Russia may not have toed the U.S. line on Iraq, but the KirovOrchestra of St. Petersburg's Mariinsky Theatre didn't hesitate tohelp when the war intruded on the U.S. classical music scene.

Last month the Rotterdam Philharmonic, headed by Valery Gergiev,who also is the Kirov's music director, canceled a seven-city U.S.tour, citing "a feeling of increased insecurity as a result of thewar in Iraq." Gergiev and the Kirov were finishing a spring tour inToronto and decided to stay on this side of the Atlantic to pick upthe Rotterdam's concert dates.

They brought their unexpectedly lengthened road show to SymphonyCenter Tuesday night, jettisoning the Tchaikov-sky selection on theRotterdam's program but retaining Shostakovich's scorched-earthFourth Symphony. Nikolaj Znai-der, the stellar Danish violinist nowbased in Tel Aviv, was the soloist as originally scheduled, playingBruch's First Violin Concerto rather than a Mozart concerto. Theevening opened with the Overture to Wagner's "Tannhauser."

Hearing the Rotterdam orchestra for the first time in Chicagounder Gergiev's always-hyperenergetic baton was an attractiveprospect. But the Kirov and Gergiev, last heard here in an all-Prokofiev program in December 2001, have a strong Chicago following,and Symphony Center was virtually full. It's inconceivable,especially after the fire and ice of the Kirov's Shostakovich, thatanyone left the hall disappointed.

Much is written about the pressure Shostakovich was under between1936 and Stalin's death in 1953 to rein in his unruly genius andcompose "socialist realist" music that would be accessible andedifying to Russia's recently liberated masses. Rightly fearingcensure, imprisonment or worse, he sometimes did.

The Fourth Symphony, completed in 1936, was pulled shortly beforeits scheduled premiere that year and not heard until 1961. It is anunfettered outpouring in Shostakovich's typically sardonic, wildlyinventive voice. Whether it is a protest against the ruthless Sovietsystem or simply an expression of Shostakovich's unblinking worldview is open to debate. There can be no argument, however, that theFourth Symphony flings listeners into a musical roller-coaster ridethat is both disturbing and utterly compelling.

This symphony requires huge forces, and a handful of ChicagoSymphony Orchestra players filled in Tuesday night for Kirov playersunable to remain for the extended tour. Gergiev's podium styleborders on the manic, but he drew a fine combination of preciserhythmic outline and sprawling, ear-filling eruptions from hisplayers. The orchestra reveled in Shostako-vich's boisterous, oftenrude mood. Individual brass and wind players swaggered through theirbrief solos like schoolyard bullies, gleefully popping up anddisappearing as they taunted their equally impudent classmates.

The orchestra offered ideal accompaniment for Znaider's cleanlyarticulated but passionate playing in Bruch's First Violin Concerto.The young violinist was back in Chicago after incandescentperformances of the Szymanowski Violin Concerto with the CSO andmusic director Daniel Barenboim in early March. The same kind ofhighly charged chemistry that animated those concerts was obvious inZnaider's collaboration with Gergiev and the Kirov.

The concert opened with a majestic, spacious reading of the"Tannhauser" Overture.