John Kasica's two-fisted beating of dual snare drums; Henry Claude emphatically slapping a tambourine; Tom Drake's frenzied trumpet; the SLSO trombones driving a relentless music machine: just a few of the afterthoughts that came to me after the astounding Shostakovich Symphony No. 8.
The first movement is a symphony in and of itself, defiant crescendos
followed by half-mad scurryings of sound, with Cally Banham's English
horn solo standing out. It's like a song sung in a quiet time in the
midst of calamity--not impervious to the strife, but even more beautiful
because of it. Cally said afterward that of all the great English horn
solos, this weekend is her first time playing the Shostakovich 8. She
played it as if it had been dormant in her soul all her life.
