Lahav Shani is dedicated to imparting ‘the secrets’ to the next generation

When conductor Lahav Shani visits the Chicago Symphony Orchestra for the third time, there won’t be any interpretive issues to work out between the maestro and his soloist. Sandwiched between performances Dec. 19-21 of favorite orchestral works by Beethoven and Brahms, the artist scheduled to perform Shostakovich’s Second Piano Concerto is Shani himself.

The relatively rare conductor-as-piano-soloist scenario may trigger a particular memory among longtime Chicago Symphony subscribers. On Oct. 4, 1997, when Symphony Center reopened its doors after a massive four-year, $120 million renovation, a special celebratory concert was led by CSO’s then music director Daniel Barenboim, with himself as soloist in a Mozart piano concerto. Shani, 35, who was born in Tel Aviv and is now Berlin-based, does somewhat resemble Barenboim, who helmed the CSO from 1991 to 2006.

And Shani has often sought his elder’s advice and confidence: “Of course I knew Barenboim even when I was growing up in Israel,” said Shani in a recent phone conversation. "Certainly after I moved to Berlin, he became my mentor quickly. Even though I had my own teachers at the Berlin academy (the Hochschule für Musik Hanns Eisler), Barenboim was really the go-to person for me.

“In 2018, when I became chief conductor of the Rotterdam Philharmonic, he even agreed to become my first soloist at my inaugural concert! We became over the years actually very close, which we still are to this day. I cherish this friendship very much.”

Shani and the CSO’s director-designate Klaus Mäkelä also know each other quite well. The two have, in fact, performed on stage together when neither one was conducting. This past summer Shani played piano, along with Mäkelä on cello and Leonidas Kavakos (who is also a conductor) on violin, in a performance of Beethoven’s Triple Concerto at the Verbier Festival in Switzerland. In that abundance of maestros, it was actually a fourth conductor, Britain’s Sir Simon Rattle, on the podium.

Chicagoans may remember Shani’s energetic CSO debut in February 2023 — an all-Russian program of Rachmaninov and Prokofiev, at which time the conductor stepped off the podium to join the soloist, pianist Beatrice Rana, in a charming four-hand rendition of Tchaikovsky’s Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy from The Nutcracker ballet, as an encore.

In June 2024, Shani was back at Orchestra Hall with Russian pianist Daniil Trifonov for the Chicago premiere of the piano concerto by former CSO composer-in-residence Mason Bates.

What to bring to the CSO in December for his third engagement? “Well, I had been thinking for a long time about that,” he said. "I realized I had already brought two Russian pieces, so I wanted to do something more Germanic this time, and the Brahms Symphony No. 1 was very high on my list. And the management of the orchestra said they wanted to have me this time as a soloist as well.

"So for that solo, we thought, well, the concerto doesn’t have to be Germanic also. We could have a nice combination of different styles. And so we came up with Shostakovich’s Piano Concerto No. 2. I truly love this composer, and especially this concerto, which is somewhat naive and lighthearted, so it’s going to be a really marvelous collaboration, I am sure."

Any conductor, especially a relatively young one, cannot help being impressed with the long history of an orchestra such as the CSO. “So many of the pieces that I have done with this orchestra, they have done with the composers themselves!” Shani exclaimed. "With Prokofiev, Rachmaninov and so on. So it is quite overwhelming in a way, and certainly some things stay with the orchestra naturally because of this, in the orchestra’s fundamental spirit, the phrasing, its memory of the sound."

Nevertheless, Shani doesn’t make a point of studying the older library markings in the music he encounters at various orchestras. “Conductors come with their own markings and their own wishes in their time, and I have mine,” he said. “But there is some kind of special understanding that remains among the musicians, and their approach to music in general, that is very much there for sure. As for the Chicago Symphony, I also have to say I see a great deal of flexibility on their side as to understanding where I am coming from, and what I am trying to achieve.”

Shani doesn’t see the rehearsal process as something that requires only the orchestra to be flexible. Nor does he see it as something that requires the conductor to respect every aspect of an orchestra’s performance tradition. "It’s really a bit of both," he said. "It’s about defining the ideal way together. "When I came to the Israel Philharmonic [where he is now music director] for the first time, some of the long-timers who played with Solti and Bernstein were still there. But when I started as music director in 2020, it was at a time of huge generational turnover; all of a sudden about two-thirds of the orchestra changed within five years or so."

Although the newly constituted orchestra was wonderful, and highly engaged, Shani soon learned that he needed the inside knowledge that some of the older players were able to impart. "They had so much experience, so many things to tell, and I don’t mean just the great old stories," he said.

"I remember one encounter in particular, when I was trying to get a certain sound from the violins in Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony. In my own mind, I was very clear regarding the special quality I was trying to get, but as I would think how to do it, I would try the passage over and over again with the musicians."

But the effort was in vain, he said. "And then in the break, this guy came to me, one of the musicians who was just about to retire. And he told me, ’You know, when I came to the orchestra, I was just a young member. And the old-timers from then, they were the people who knew the founding members of the orchestra, so the memory goes that much all the way back. And back, and back.’ 

"And this guy said, ’Back then, they didn’t have maybe the best technical skills. Definitely nothing like the young people of today, nothing to compare. But they were so musically adept at that special thing you are asking for — the way you want that note to develop — that you wouldn’t even have needed to ask for it back then, because they always played it like that!’

“It was a certain fingering they would choose to play on a certain string,” Shani said. "And I don’t want to get too technical about it, but there was also this particular approach — which is gone and you cannot learn it in any book, but it passes on, and it is handed on from one generation to the other."

The musician showed Shani the technique from the old days. "Then after the break, that’s exactly what I asked the orchestra players to do. And it was absolutely right! It was one of these wonderful things that the older players can give you. The secrets."