Great Barrington — It was half past six at the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center on the evening of Saturday, October 15, and the rumors were flying. The concert should have started at six p.m. But where was the orchestra? The 13 members of Chamber Orchestra Kremlin — all Russian citizens — had been due to arrive in Great Barrington hours earlier to rehearse Haydn’s Cello Concerto No. 1 with Close Encounters With Music (CEWM) Artistic Director Yehuda Hanani. When it became clear that the orchestra members would be absent from the concert’s first half, Mr. Hanani enjoyed the luxury of ten or fifteen seconds to identify not only an alternative to the Haydn piece, but a musician (magician?) who’d be capable of performing it on zero notice with no rehearsal. Meanwhile, as the scant seconds elapsed, paying patrons in the Mahaiwe auditorium exhaled loudly and stared at their timepieces like jilted dates. One could only imagine what was transpiring backstage . . .
“Damn it Marcie! I’m a cellist, not a magician!”
That’s what Mr. Hanani could have said to CEWM Board President Marcie Setlow. But, in fact, he said nothing of the sort. More likely, he said something like, “Hey! It’s me!” in the manner of Indiana Jones.
A situation like this would have had other artistic directors drinking whiskey straight from the bottle. But Mr. Hanani knew exactly what to do: He simply picked up his cello, walked onto the Mahaiwe stage, and performed — from memory — one of the most difficult pieces in the cello repertory, J. S. Bach’s Suite No. 3 in C Major for unaccompanied cello. Thus, Saturday’s audience was privileged to see the indomitable Yehuda Hanani pull a rabbit out of his hat. Everyone in the hall knew they were witnessing something extraordinary, and, when the piece ended, they expressed their approval in no uncertain terms. (Hanani — along with baroque cellist Kivie Cahn-Lipman — will reprise this performance at the newly restored St. James Place in Great Barrington on February 18, 2017 in a program that will also include the first and second Bach cello suites.)
At Intermission, the orchestra was still missing, the CEWM staff was seriously contemplating panic, and folks all around the Mahaiwe seemed to be wondering aloud: Had the U.S. Department of Homeland Security detained the Russians at LaGuardia Airport? Or had KGB agents secreted away the young players at the behest of Donald Putin? And if not him, then who? Who was behind this bizarre plot? And why?
But there was no plot, either bizarre or banal.
At 7:19 pm, two windowless black vans pulled up near the Mahaiwe’s front entrance, and out jumped, not KGB agents, but a passel of youngsters carrying violin cases. The musicians — many still attired in their street clothes — hustled onto the stage, took a very quick bow, and launched into Dimitri Shostakovich’s Chamber Symphony, Op. 110a (String Quartet No. 8, arranged by Rudolf Barshai).
Ensembles from all corners of the globe have been giving satisfying performances of Shostakovich’s music for the better part of a century. The Boston Symphony Orchestra, for example, whose ranks are amply endowed with native Russians, has a long history of championing this composer’s works, and today, the BSO’s affinity for Shostakovich is as strong as it ever was during the tenure of Russian-born conductor Serge Koussevitzky. Case in point: The BSO won a Grammy with Andris Nelsons in February for their recording of Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 10.
And yet . . . when an all-Russian ensemble like Chamber Orchestra Kremlin performs Shostakovich, the listening experience is strangely gripping and uniquely satisfying. Why? Because the music is about them. Shostakovich’s music is not only about his own life. It’s about the lives of his fellow citizens, particularly the musicians of the orchestra. The stories he tells about life and death under Stalin’s shadow are part of every Russian’s personal heritage. That’s why, when Russians perform his music, the result is audibly authentic.
Saturday’s concert closed with Tchaikovsky’s “Serenade for Strings,” Op. 48. The sound was lush, partly on account of the group’s excellent musicianship, but also on account of Tchaikovsky’s genius as an orchestrator.
None of Saturday’s performances would have succeeded without the orchestra’s outstanding intonation and precision of ensemble. They know this material so deeply and intimately that, in performance, the composer’s thoughts and intentions come through with crystal clarity and maximum emotional impact.
