Review: Maestro Tausk and the VSO Nail Shostakovich’s 5th Symphony

On a night built around Vadim Gluzman it was the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra who stole the show.

The Vancouver Symphony Orchestra is wrapping up its 2023/2024 season in style. Friday evening’s prelude of sorts to the day of music and the season finale (Das Lied Von Der Erde yay) featured a big time performance of Shostakovich’s 5th symphony. When the orchestra is playing this well it’s hard not to be excited.

Tausk can probably conduct a great Shostakovich 5 in his sleep. The nerds amongst us remember his surprisingly excellent performance of the symphony with the VSOI program, back when that was a thing that existed. Friday night’s performance was straight forward and to the point but in all the right ways. This was the kind of performance that didn’t get in the way, and provided the orchestra a chance to go for it at every turn. The first movement moved at a quick tempo, flowing organically through its changing themes. Tausk has always had a grasp of the modernist Soviet scherzo and here was no exception, this was played with the gusto required. The Third movement, the gnarliest music of the work, had all of the emotional depth that it needed and more. The now mighty VSO strings searing through the movement’s climaxes in a way that seemed impossible 10 years ago. Also something that felt impossible for the longest time  was a finale where everything didn’t get swallowed by percussion and brass. The VSO is now an orchestra that can go full bombast with the clarity of a truly great orchestra. Tausk, for his part, played the final movement with an intelligent ambiguity that made the movement feel like an internal struggle between joy and terror. Oh and those Mariss Jansons esque accelerandos peppered into the finale were a really fun touch.

The most exciting part of Friday’s performance was that the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra sounded as coherent as they have all season. The balances were perfect, the intensity impressive, and gone were some of the wobbles in the woodwinds and brass that have popped up here and there throughout the season. This felt as confident and comfortable as the VSO has been all season. Perhaps it was that Tausk has now been around consistently for the last month, perhaps it was the large special concert audience that provided motivation, or perhaps this is just one of the “VSO pieces.” Whatever it was everyone involved was on fire. Truly exciting stuff all around.

Oh yeah and Vadim Gluzman was there too. Gluzman is one of the most reliable soloists out there and Friday’s performance of the Tchaikovsky concerto was no exception. The first movement took a bit to get going but once the first orchestral outburst came halfway through the movement the VSO jump started what was a pretty great performance from there. The second movement was beautifully sweet and lyrical. Gluzman and the orchestra played off of each other wonderfully. The final movement, the highlight of the performance, Gluzman went full folk delivering a movement that felt almost stuck to the ground in the best ways possible. This was a really good performance from a great soloist that got its due from an enthusiastic Orpheum audience Friday evening.

At the end of the day though it was the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra’s magnificent Shostakovich that stole the show. This performance was so good that it made me question why not just put this symphony on as your big day of music ending performance? I understand not wanting to feel like you are ripping off paying customers the night before, but the VSO sold this concert on the Vadim Gluzman performance not the Shostakovich. I feel like there was a real missed opportunity here to really grab some potential new fans for the orchestra. You could have still done the Carmen fantasy and the VSO Sinfonietta play along in the first half and then really tried to blow the audience away with Shostakovich in the second. It feels like the VSO plays these kind of big splashy “not the usual crowd concerts” (and lets be honest most of next season) too safely. Casual classical crowds can handle thorny major works! You might just convert a few of the free customers into paying ones that way!