Shosta-freakin-kovich!

Symphony No. 8 in C minor, Opus 65 (1943), performed by the Oregon Symphony Orchestra tonight and I was a lucky usher indeed!


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Entering the resplendent Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall exhausted by a recent spell of melancholy I was looking forward to kickin' back and readin' a little Madame Bovary. At least that was my intention and I had ample opportunity in the program's first half which featured Schumann's Cello Concerto in A minor. The soloist came highly credentialed and acclaimed but the piece didn't move me, except out of the building to suck on a Pall Mall and brood while drinking in a glorious, purple Portland twilight. Refreshed in an addict sort of way I donned the standard intermission tight-lipped smile, nodded with false cheerfulness to the patrons who shuffled and/or chortled most undiscerningly as is their entrenched habit. The concert master sounded the usual sweet note, cueing the bluehairs to shutup and shuffle to their seats, and my thoughts turned to Flaubert's masterpiece. But Madame Bovary was destined to stay in my pocket for I was instantly seized by the violence of the first movement. The violins wailed discordantly as my sperm count shot through the ornate roof, and rocketed past the stars. This is the true wartime symphony, the snare drums shredding me to an ironic wakefulness, and the mournful english horn winding my guts around the sole willow weeping on the battlefield. On and on the music swelled and shrunk with agony, with madhouse rhythms and mayhem of horns, trumpets, trombones, cymbals and all the rest of the Devil's instruments.
This was bombast and carnage without limit. The bluest hairs left early. It ain't grandma's Beethoven. My fellow ushers grumbled to their watches as I stared fiercely at the undulating orchestra and the spasmodic wild-haired conductor till the soft sweet life-affirming end. And I will end this brief review with the master's own view of his radical new work. Shostakovich said, "I can describe the philosophical concept of my new symphony very briefly: Life remains beautiful. All that is dark and oppressive will disappear; all that is beautiful will triumph."