DSCH CD Review - Rothschild’s Violin, sans opus K (Veniamin Fleishman, completed by Shostakovich); The Gamblers, sans opus K

DSCH Journal

DSCH CD Review

Rothschild’s Violin, sans opus K (Veniamin Fleishman, completed by Shostakovich)[a]; The Gamblers, sans opus K[b].
Vasily Petrenko, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, Jacek Janiszewski (bass – Yakov Matveievich Ivanov, “Bronza”[a]/Alexey[b]), Elena Gabouri (mezzo-soprano – Marfa Ivanova[a]), Andris Lapins (tenor – Rothschild[a]/Colonel Krugel[b]), Michal Lehotsky (tenor – Moses Ilyich Shakhes[a]/Ikharyov[b]), Peter Danailov (baritone – Stepan Ivanovitch Uteshitelny[b]), Roman Astakhov (bass – Shvokhnev[b]), Piotr Nowacki (bass – Gavryushka[b]), Alexei Ekkel (bass balalaika)[b].
Avie AV2121. DDD. 2-CD set TT 37:07 + 45:37.
Recorded live at Philharmonic Hall, Liverpool, 27 September 2006.

This live performance of Rothschild’s Violin is only the third commercial release of the opera and fills the void left by the retirement from the CD catalogue of Gennady Rozhdestvensky’s 1995 Rotterdam recording (RCA Victor Red Seal 09026-68434-2) – Rozhdestvensky’s 1982 premiere recording for Melodiya (LP A10 00019 004) has yet to appear on CD.

On its surface, Chekhov’s 1894 short story Rothschild’s Fiddle appears too slight a candidate for an operatic makeover. The old coffin-maker Yakov Ivanov, nicknamed Bronza, augments his meagre income by playing his violin in a klezmer orchestra in the stetl, together with a poor flautist who incongruously bears the name of the famous millionaire Rothschild. Irritated by Rothschild’s mournful playing, Bronza insults him and quits the orchestra. Bronza surveys his life and tallies naught but financial losses, even including the necessity of making a coffin for his dying wife, Marfa. When Marfa tries to remind him of their baby girl to whom they used to sing songs beneath the willow trees by the river 50 years ago, Bronza remembers neither the baby nor the willows. After Marfa’s funeral, Bronza’s reflection on his unwarranted neglect of his spouse throughout their years together is interrupted by Rothschild, sent to fetch Bronza by the orchestra’s conductor, Shakhes. Irritated, Bronza refuses to come and chases Rothschild away with curses. Afterwards, Bronza goes walking. Coming to the river, he recognises the willow tree and remembers the baby who died in infancy. He realises he has poisoned his life with his glass-is-half-empty outlook. To make amends, he gives his precious violin to Rothschild. End of story.

Yet Shostakovich saw operatic potential in this material, and in 1939 suggested the project to his conservatory student Veniamin Fleishman. Fleishman completed the libretto and piano score but only around a third of the orchestration before war broke out. During the siege of Leningrad, Fleishman joined the People’s Volunteer Brigade, and was killed in action in September 1941. Shostakovich completed the remaining orchestration, including the opera’s opening and closing pages, by February 1944.

Fleishman’s libretto reassigns most of Chekhov’s third-person narrative to Bronza. Although Fleishman closely shadows the language of the original short story, a handful of significant omissions diminish his opera’s scope. Missing are the episodes in which Bronza accompanies Marfa to the doctor, who does nothing for her, and Bronza’s fateful visit to the same doctor, at which he realises that his own death is imminent. This latter event in Chekhov’s tale prompts Bronza’s reflection that death will be a welcome respite from losses; without it, the transition to his operatic soliloquy on this theme is jarring.

Also absent from the opera is Bronza’s deathbed scene, in which he asks his priest confessor to give his violin to Rothschild. Instead, a vital Bronza whose musings on death are still only hypothetical hands over his violin to his former victim.

Most striking of all, Fleishman – himself Jewish – deletes the virulently anti-Semitic rants that Bronza hurls at Rothschild and, by extension, all Jews. Taken together with the removal of the Christian last rites scene, this change renders ambiguous Yakov (Jacob) Ivanov’s ethnic identity; note his Hebrew first name and archetypical Russian surname. Written in the context of rampantly anti-Semitic nineteenth century Russia, Chekhov’s tale was bold in proposing the Jew Rothschild as a worthy beneficiary of the Christian Bronza’s newfound philanthropy: “If it were not for hatred and malice, people would get immense benefit from one another.” In Fleishman’s version, the violin links two individuals who may or may not both be Jewish, serving as a tool of reformation of a curmudgeon ... but not an anti-Semite.

Though the opera loses this dimension of interethnic reconciliation, it admirably conveys the humanism of Chekhov’s story through emotionally involving thematic development. Despite the multiple levels of influence Shostakovich had on what we now hear of Fleishman’s opera, we can discern a transparency of line not characteristic of Shostakovich’s contemporary works. Jewish motifs are prominent throughout (Shostakovich had not yet included them in his own oeuvre), including a traditional Hanukkah tune embedded in Bronza’s rueful admission that in 50 years he never looked after Marfa, never cuddled her.

Key to the opera’s emotional impact is the soulful violin solo theme that portrays Bronza’s remorse over his lost daughter and reappears for his reconciliation with Rothschild. In the purely orchestral concluding pages, Shostakovich’s arrangement transports this theme’s development into the sound world of his Leningrad Symphony’s climactic close. Given the intimate scale of the opera, this fanfare sounds disproportionately grandiose. It seems significant that Shostakovich chose to project Fleishman’s work through the lens of his Seventh Symphony, completed in 1941, rather than his Eighth, finished in 1943 just before he took up Rothschild’s Violin. Perhaps what we have here is a turn away from Chekhov’s play to face the audience with a tribute to a respected student who died heroically defending Leningrad; a victory flourish for the resurrection of a work Shostakovich loved and saved from oblivion.

Rozhdestvensky’s RCA recording remains desirable, but Petrenko’s new version plumbs deeper emotions. Petrenko’s Bronza, Jacek Janiszewski, is graver and more aged than Sergei Leiferkus on RCA. Especially in passages where he reflects on missed opportunities, Janiszewski conveys more true regret, with a more wistful tone. Petrenko’s Marfa, Elena Gabouri is also appropriately frailer than Rozhdestvensky’s soprano, Marina Shaguch.

As for the quality of the orchestral playing, both contenders are well matched. Rozhdestvensky directs his players with characteristic deliberation and strong accents; for this material, I prefer Petrenko’s brisk and lyrical approach.

Avie’s coupling is another wartime opera left unfinished by its original composer (Krzysztof Meyer’s 1980 completion was recorded by Michail Jurowski conducting the Nordwestdeutsche Philharmonie; Capriccio 60 062-2). Again, Avie field a strong team, though I find the Gogolian absurdity of Shostakovich’s opera to be better served by Rozhdestvensky’s premiere recording (BMG/Melodiya 74321 60319 2; reviewed in DSCH No. 11; deleted; reissued as Melodiya MELY 1001192). Neither Petrenko nor Jurowski give us that ridiculously drunken tremolo on the bass balalaika for Gavriushka’s solo that we hear in Rozhdestvensky’s recording or that of Andrei Tchistiakov on Saison Russe (RUS 788115 or 7799115; reviewed in DSCH Nos. 9 and 14; deleted).

Avie present a spacious and rather distant soundstage for both works, with a decent dynamic range after turning up the volume to compensate for the low level of the recordings. The audience are not in evidence, but one can occasionally make out what sounds to be Petrenko humming along to louder passages.

Elena Silina’s booklet notes for Avie’s Rothschild’s Violin provide more details on the work’s gestation than do the unaccredited notes to the RCA release. One questionable item is her attribution of the libretto to Alexander Preis, the librettist of Shostakovich’s Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, unlike other commentators and the score’s publisher, who all identify Fleishman himself as the librettist. Rosamund Bartlett’s notes on The Gamblers are admirably informative. Avie provide French and German translations of these notes, but regrettably only an English translation of the libretti of both operas; no Russian text, either in Cyrillic (as on RCA for Rothschild’s Violin) or transliteration. Still, this omission does not prevent this otherwise handsomely packaged release from earning a firm recommendation.

W. Mark Roberts
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