The Boston Symphony Orchestra's concert last Friday featured Garrick Ohlsson playing Schumann's Piano Concerto in A Minor and Shostakovich's Symphony No. 5, conducted by Daniele Gatti. Joel Herzfeld and I sat down to discuss the concert.

H: Well, what did you think about the symphony?

J: I was really confused at some point. ... I think you even noticed it, when he introduced the bass and, I don't even know what it was ... a woodwind or something?

H: Oh! No, the piano!

J: It was! It was a piano back there!

H: Yeah, it's a piano back there, isn't that great? I played the symphony first semester freshman year, and I'd forgotten they throw a piano back there. I love his instrumentation, because he uses every instrument as fully and as hard as he can, like you said about the violins. He clearly likes dragging a piano into the middle of an enormous orchestra with the gong and harps. ... It's everything he can get in there.

J: It's also really loud. The timpani at the end were pretty powerful; that was cool.

H: It's just so, so angry. He's angry because he couldn't compose what he wanted for fear of death. And he was scared, and he was young, barely 30. I think what you said with the strings, going over and over and not letting up on that high note, that's his anger. I saw you laughing during the second movement, when the violin soloist came in.

J: She's so good. I was just laughing in delight. What I also thought was really cool was in the third movement, when the violins had that very, very low tremolo. I thought that was really well done; I'd never seen that before. And then the cell phone went off.

H: Also, the guy sitting behind us should've taken a decongestant before he went to the symphony. I could have killed him.

J: Oh, and did you dig our conductor's hair?

H: The way it moved?

J: Yeah! I loved the way it flapped, and I loved the way at the end when he got really excited, and he thrust his conducting stick right into his hair and flapped around. ... I'd heard that fourth movement and also the second one before, I believe.

H: I hear a lot of sarcasm in the second movement. He has that cute little melody in the violin, and it's tripping along, but then when he adds the entire orchestra under it, it's always not quite right. It's a little bit of a grimace.

J: Sure, I see it. What were you saying before about introduction of that one theme by the trumpet?

H: The trumpet does this cool thing with one new theme while the orchestra is doing something completely different and completely active, and then the whole orchestra plays that theme, and it's enormous. Then it all drops back down again, and the horn plays it much slower and more quietly. It's a different way of introducing the theme. So, what did you think of the piano concerto?

J: Pretty good. It was very Mahler-esque-the way he meanders off into nothing, the way the piano just comes in the beginning and doesn't really introduce anything.

H: Schumann is so much more intimate than Mahler is, but I hear that.

J: The meandering was really what makes me think of Mahler, and the way pieces don't necessarily coalesce all at once.

H: In a lot of concertos, the orchestra and soloist back off and take over from each other, but here, everyone's just playing together. Schumann wrote this for his wife, Clara Schumann, a piano prodigy.

J: She did some composing on her own. She did a bunch of folk songs, which are really cool.

H: They're sweet. I think one of the reasons the concert is so delicate is that he wrote it with her in mind.

J: There were times when the pianist was playing, and I couldn't actually figure out what the hell he was doing with his fingers. I honestly was scratching my head about how he could make these sounds with just two hands. I was enjoying his performance too, the way his back arced and his hands went up so delicately and then came back down again, his fingers splayed. I really liked that.

H: I like the opening theme, because it's so quiet and simple and melancholy. Is that the word?

J: The piano was hard to hear when we were in the back. Part of it was that it seemed to call for a lower dynamic.

H: The orchestra was smaller, and a fortissimo for Schumann is not as loud as a fortissimo for Shostakovich. Plus, we moved a lot closer to the stage during the Shostakovich piece, which I didn't do when I saw the BSO play Shostakovich's Symphony 4 last time.

J: Well, at least we got the Shostakovich. I thought parts of the fourth and first movements in particular were very thrilling. There's that part around the shrieking violins ... and the piano. It's the last thing I expected, and it just came out of nowhere. That was probably the most interesting point in the concert.

H: Honestly, my favorite part is in the third movement, when all the strings play together in the low register, then pause. It's a very crystalline moment. And then the guy behind us started sniffling again.

J: I love those tremolos. I liked especially when the orchestra gets really loud, and for whatever reason Shostakovich has the bassists play pizzicato when nobody could possibly hear them. But if you see it, you know that it's there, and you can hear it around the big, loud noise of everyone else. It's interesting that he had it there at all and interesting that you can hear it.

H: I wonder why they put those two pieces in the same concert. Any ideas? Because the Schumann is quite refined and intimate, with a small orchestra, and then the Shostakovich is enormous and angry. What could they be trying to do? Contrast, maybe? Can you sum up the concert in one sentence?

J: [Cat whistles]

H: Thanks, Joel.



Edited for content and clarity by Hannah Kirsch.