These programs are anything but standoffish. Soon after the Ives DVD begins with pastoral shots of the fall colors of the New England landscape, the peaceful soundtrack suddenly shifts gears. “This is music by Charles Ives, America’s contrary musical prophet,” says MTT as the camera cuts to the orchestra’s visionary music director. “It’s music that veers between tender sentiment and savage chaos.” Cue the SFS’ raucous horns, blaring away as our conductor whips the air with his baton.
“Ives’ music is multidimensional ... very complex ... unexpected ... It kind of reminds me of a three-ring circus [where] all three rings are active at the same time,” say four different orchestra musicians over the blare, as the camera cuts from one to the other. “Ives always succeeds in shocking people ... It’s very on-the-edge music,” say two others.
As the camera pans in on the forest-surrounded house where Ives composed, we find ourselves drawn in deeper. We want to know more about the composer, more about his music and the upbringing that helped shape such a financially astute contrarian. With words illuminating the music, music validating the words, and imagery deepening the two, the episode begins to unfold.
Keeping Score - Inside the Orchestra
The Shostakovich program is especially revelatory. Seguing from Shostakovich’s early career, where he was writing music for such profound silent cinematic gems as Aelita, Queen of Mars, to the period of oppression that began after Stalin saw Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, the shifts in man and music are painfully evident. Interviews with several Soviet-born orchestra members are especially moving. And as Tilson Thomas enables us to understand how Shostakovich expressed feelings that his Russian audience members dared not express, the import of his accomplishment becomes greater.
The episode is brilliantly conceived and executed, and illuminating to the core. Regardless of whether you may feel that any single performance, with dynamics and tonal color inherently compromised by the DVD format, is the most expressive version ever recorded, the combination of music and visuals empowers the final drum thwacks in Shostakovich’s Fifth and Ives’ Holidays Symphony to shake us as perhaps never before. With each of the fall 2009 episodes available for purchase not long after it is broadcast, you have multiple opportunities to benefit from the wealth of knowledge that MTT and the SFS production team have invested in the series.