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KENNETH SLOWIK, conductor CLASSICAL MUSIC A period-instrument orchestra playing Shostakovich — sounds like the stuff of a New Yorker satire, right? Well, as it happens, the Smithsonian Chamber Orchestra did just that at the Renwick Gallery on Sunday evening, and made a jaw-dropping success of it. The piece was Shostakovich's Chamber Symphony (Rudolf Barshai's string orchestra arrangement of the composer's 1960 String Quartet No. 8), and the 18 musicians of the orchestra used 17th-to-19th-century string instruments from the Smithsonian's musical instrument collection, all outfitted with gut strings and played with minimal vibrato. The keening violins and throaty violas, the sinewy, dark-grained lower strings — all emphasized the trenchancy in Shostakovich's writing, while bringing an almost physical, human immediacy to its tone of mourning. Conductor Kenneth Slowik's reading showed a deep understanding of the music's emotional trajectory. Mahler's string orchestra arrangement of Schubert's "Death and the Maiden" Quartet proved an edge-of-the-seat experience. Slowik honored the inflated scale of Mahler's arrangement with saturated string tones and a Beethovenian sense of drama when called for, but suggested the intimacy and heartbreak of Schubert's original with just as much success — and his orchestra produced some ravishing sounds. Slowik's own orchestrations of Schubert's songs "Erlkonig" and "Death and the Maiden" (both vividly characterized by soprano Linda Mabbs) were, respectively, operatically thrilling and starkly moving, the latter scored for only a hushed complement of cellos. An outstanding concert. — Joe Banno
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