Shostakovich's 15th Symphony, his last, is one of his strangest and most enigmatic pieces.The music cuts unpredictably from funereal gloom to sardonic wit, and incorporates quotations from a weird cross-section of music history: from the effusive jollity of Rossini's William Tell Overture to the dramatic intensity of motifs from Wagner's Ring. It is a piece that seems to invite some kind of extra-musical reading, as if there were some way of explaining the music's wilful volatility.
Michael Tilson Thomas's performance with the London Symphony Orchestra, part of his Last Works series, was a more convincing revelation of this most mysterious symphony than any literary interpretation. His performance suggested that the piece's mystery is created, not by hidden meanings or programmes, but rather by a web of musical connections and cross-references.
The Rossini quotes in the first movement do not interrupt the structure of the music; instead, they are integrated within the symphonic argument. Shostakovich's perfunctory melodies and martial rhythms prepare the ground for the William Tell Overture.
The piece is a dreamlike game of musical free association, but it is also a profound statement about the elusiveness and instability of musical meaning. Tilson Thomas and the LSO communicated the music's ambiguity with absolute clarity.
Shostakovich's Second Cello Concerto, performed by Lynn Harrell, was another example of the richness of his later music. In Harrell's hands, the piece emerged as a conflict between images of innocence and experience, from the toy-like melodies of the first movement to the savage mockery of the second. The finale was the most moving movement of all, as the solo cello was swamped by a barrage of percussion. A repeated major-key melody appeared in the midst of this complex drama, like a vision of untainted, pastoral perfection.
Harrell and Tilson Thomas brilliantly negotiated the work's febrile emotional world. The ending of the piece was as satisfying as it was bizarre: accompanied only by the clockwork ticking of the percussion, the cello line faded into silence.
