Valery Gergiev/the Kirov Orchestra and Chorus

By RICHARD S. GINELL

Valery Gergiev/The Kirov Orchestra and Chorus (Avery Fisher Hall, New York; 2 ,738 seats; $ 85 top)
 
Performers: The Kirov Orchestra and Chorus conducted by Valery Gergiev. Reviewed July 22, 1996. Who would have thought that a major new American arts festival would devote its very first concert to a pair of big works supposedly written to glorify the old Soviet Union? Nor did one miss the irony of using the Yeltsin-era Kirov Orchestra, from which its magnetic leader, Valery Gergiev, produced massive, edgy sonorities that rivaled a rock concert in decibels.
 

Music-critic-turned-fest artistic director John Rockwell promised that the Lincoln Center Festival would be different, and the opening concert cut mischievously against the grain -- not only of political but musical P.C. guidelines.

The odd thing is that while both Shostakovich's Symphony No. 11 ("The Year 1905") and Prokofiev's "Cantata for the 20th Anniversary of the October Revolution" were condemned in the West as bootlicking attempts to please the regime, their real meanings are quite different.

TX:Presented by Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts Inc. The publication of Shostakovich's controversial memoirs altered the take on the 11th Symphony, which turns out to be a vast, eloquent, hour-long cry of pain and outrage at the violence that Russian governments have inflicted upon their people. This is a neglected masterwork, as searing as anything Shostakovich wrote, and Gergiev pushed it hard with predominantly fast tempos and an intensity that seethed even in the relaxed passages.

The even rarer Prokofiev work is exactly as it seems -- a genuine attempt to make nice to Stalin, complete with excerpts from his, Marx's and Lenin's speeches and articles. Loaded with bureaucratic bombast, the piece is a fascinating wreck, but offers enough of Prokofiev's harmonic quirks and dissonances to keep our attention. Prokofiev went out of his way to toe the line , even including a manic accordion solo aimed directly at Stalin's yen for folk music.

The only way to make this vodka go down is to play the hell out of it -- which Gergiev did, maintaining a high electric charge at all times, aided by his marvelous Russian chorus. By doing so, Gergiev was able to get a charge from the audience, which went wild after the last lingering -- and very loud -- chord.