In Friday’s (12/5) New York Times, David Allen writes, “I’m not sure I’ve ever been as scared in a concert hall as I was on Wednesday night when the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra played Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony at Carnegie Hall…. Shostakovich wrote it in 1937, at a time when his career and even his life were in danger, a year after Soviet authorities had denounced him … [Music Director Manfred] Honeck made that pressure, that inhumanity, above all that pain, physically palpable … This was an unsparing demonstration of how orchestral sophistication of the highest order can be put to profound aesthetic ends—a testament not only to what musicians can do, but also to why they must do it. The Pittsburgh Symphony flew in to Carnegie on a high, making its first appearance in 11 years … Melia Tourangeau, its president and chief executive, said … that the problems the organization has faced are broadly those that others confront … Last month, though, the orchestra announced strong results for the past season, including a surplus of $2.3 million … and a 17 percent increase in ticket sales…. When Honeck and the Pittsburgh Symphony play [as they did for the Shostakovich], they play with a primal sort of mastery.”
