RPO/Petrenko review – a blistering, multi-hued Shostakovich
A brief first half offered a thrusting reading of Sibelius's Finlandia, a more straightforwardly patriotic work than Shostakovich's tantalisingly equivocal symphony. Conductor Vasily Petrenko proved a master of dramatic contrasts, from the opening rasp of low brass to the composer's final proclamation of nationhood.
Kurt Weill's Four Walt Whitman Songs were equally effective, thanks to Roderick Williams' honest simplicity and razor-sharp diction. The German expat's gawky settings of nationalistic poetry have the potential to get chopped up and tossed into word salads, but not with Williams at the helm. Firm-toned and equally firmly committed, he landed all four with musical panache and lyrical insight.
As for the symphony, Serebrennikov and Shagalov allowed Petrenko's blistering, multi-hued interpretation of Shostakovich's cinematic masterpiece to command centre stage. Their absorbing but never over-fussy illustrations offered extra-cerebral stimulation with evocative and occasionally provocative imagery playing out on three giant screens.
Shostakovich's four movements were visualised as a series of discrete yet interconnected narratives, broadening the storyline from Soviet resilience in the face of the destruction of Leningrad (whether by Hitler or, as Shostakovich once suggested, by Stalin) to the impact of man's technological overreach on the planet. The live-guided imagery, which referenced 20th-century constructivism and contemporary sci-fi, was inspired, from a psychedelically infused eyeball scanning the heavens to the blood-red vegetation of a haunted forest.
The opening Allegretto channelled the Icarus myth, the on-screen action going cheek-by-jowl with Petrenko's masterly build of Shostakovich's battle theme. In contrast, the light-footed second movement was accompanied by dancing cells and synapses. A poignant, post-apocalyptic Adagio led into an intense, emotional finale where Technicolor flowers blossomed as vividly as Shostakovich's music. Petrenko, visibly moved at the end, never put a foot wrong.
Multitudes, at London's Southbank Centre, continues until 3 May.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Herald Scotland
3 hours ago
- The Herald Scotland
The fury of Pussy Riot's Riot Days is more vital than ever
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ The world has changed since Pussy Riot first bombarded their way into Edinburgh in 2018 to win a Herald Angel award. Back then, key member of the anarchic balaclava-clad Russian art collective Maria Alyokhina transformed her experiences on the frontline into an incendiary piece of multi-media punk theatre. This followed a high-profile trial after Alyokhina and two other members of the collective were imprisoned after performing an anti-Putin action in a Russian Orthodox Church. The result, adapted from Alyokhina's memoir, Riot Days, and performed by Alyokhina with a well-drilled band of actor/musicians, was an urgent piece of in-yer-face agit-prop. The Herald has teamed up with to make the purchase of tickets for the festival so much easier. Seven years on, the fifty-minute compendium of autobiographical monologues, Brechtian captions, documentary film footage, primitive martial beats and industrial sturm und drang is brought bang up to date with a new band and fresh material. The former features vocal upstarts Olga Borisova and Taso Pletner, with the latter also playing flute. While Alyokhina remains at the show's centre, Borisova and Pletner flank her in a way that gives off a guerrilla girl group vibe. This is pulsed by the martial drums and electronic beats conjured up by Eric Breitenbach of Canadian band, New Age Doom. The show's narrative has developed to draw from Alyokhina's forthcoming second book, Political Girl: Life and Fate in Russia, and includes details of Pussy Riot's disruption of the 2014 Sochi Olympic Games and Alyokhina's further arrests and imprisonment. It also honours the death of anti-corruption politician, Alexey Navalny, who was almost killed after being poisoned, and later died while in prison. There is a moving moment of silence too as film footage of Russian journalist Irina Slavina is shown of her setting herself on fire. The shadow of Russia's ongoing assault on Ukraine also hangs heavy throughout the piece. Read more: In what feels like a more disciplined if just as relentless production, overseen by producer Alexander Cheparukhin and with input from composer Alina Petrova, this new version of Riot Days is about evolution as much as revolution. While acknowledging the symbolism of yore, largely this is Pussy Riot unmasked in a blitz of a show that is part history lesson, part living newspaper. At its conclusion, Alyokhina highlights how what is currently happening in Russia could easily happen anywhere. Coming a few days after more than 400 peaceful protestors were arrested, not in the old Eastern Bloc, but in twenty-first century Britain, Riot Days remains a vital call to arms. Runs at Summerhall until 23 August.
-medium.jpeg%3Fwidth%3D1200%26auto%3Dwebp%26quality%3D75%26crop%3D3%3A2%2Csmart%26trim%3D&w=3840&q=100)
Scotsman
20 hours ago
- Scotsman
Benedetti & Sitkovetsky's Tribute to Menuhin
Sign up to our Arts and Culture newsletter, get the latest news and reviews from our specialist arts writers Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to The Scotsman, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... Sitkovetsky Trio ★★★★★ Queen's Hall Even the sudden, ear-shattering roaring from a forgotten turned-on microphone couldn't put the Sitkovetsky Trio players off their stride. They'd just launched into the furious scherzo of Shostakovich's Second Piano Trio when the noise forced them to stop, only to begin the movement again even more vehemently, even savagely. The interruption probably couldn't have come in a more fitting place - and they continued with a deeply tragic slow-movement chaconne, all sobbing phrases against a monumental piano backdrop, and a bitter, grotesque finale that left few doubts as to Shostakovich's vitriolic sarcasm. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad It was typical of the Trio's intensely felt, forcefully projected performances across their programme of classics and rarities. In the second category, the Sitkovetsky players made a thrillingly strong case for Chaminade's little-known Second Piano Trio, revelling in its almost orchestral-scale textures and churning emotions, even if their more recent commission, To the Pointer Stars by Iranian-born, London-based Mahdis Golzar Kashani, proved a little more elusive, slipping into attractive grooves that seemed to lack a sense of forward movement. They opened, however, with a bounding and big-boned Beethoven 'Ghost' Trio, perhaps overegging the second movement's unsettling otherworldliness, but offering a finale in grand arcs of sound that was both captivating and galvanising. Despite unexpected sonic intrusions, a concert of compelling performances and profound emotional depths. David Kettle Benedetti & Sitkovetsky's Tribute to Menuhin ★★★★ Granted the rarely bestowed Freedom of the City of Edinburgh 60 years ago in recognition of his contribution to Scotland's capital, much of it via the Edinburgh International Festival, legendary violinist Yehudi Menuhin would surely have been proud of the tribute paid to him on Monday evening at the Usher Hall. Led by Nicola Benedetti and fellow violinist from her Menuhin School days, Alexander Sitkovetsky, it was an evening of poignancy and affection from the joint directors and players of Wroclaw's National Forum of Music, appearing as part of the EIF's focus on Poland season. Hearing the pair as an infectiously joyous alliance in Bach's Concerto for Two Violins was one of these unique festival moments that leave an indelible mark. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Fluent and well matched in tone and style, the second movement's interweaving scoring of the solo lines gleamed with radiant beauty. To start, Elgar's Serenade for String Orchestra, with EIF Rising Stars swelling the ranks, was promising in intent but not quite sufficiently settled across the ensemble. A different matter, however, when they returned for Bartok's Divertimento for String Orchestra, with its folksy and fulsome bite and energy, especially from the lower strings. Carol Main Triptic ★★★★ The Hub Violinist Greg Lawson, pianist and accordionist Phil Alexander and double-bassist Mario Caribé have played together for many years, notably in the much-loved Moishe's Bagel, purveyors of klezmer, tango and much else. Now, as the trio Triptic, they continue to gleefully defy categorisation. Their engagingly melodic and tightly delivered repertoire from their new album, The Jackdaw Sessions, reflected diverse musical influences and sources of inspiration. Alexander's opener hinted at Erik Satie, played over a stately, descending bass, until Lawson's klezmer-sounding violin soared to stratospheric trilling. Another, plaintive, Jewish-sounding air had been unearthed recently in Kiev, while Caribé's Flatlands, with its resonant bass work, was inspired by Lincolnshire scenery. A pensive waltz by Alexander commemorated a much-loved cocker spaniel, while a lusty rumba by Caribe celebrated his venturesome Spanish-Brazilian grandmother, its energetic progression from minor to major reflecting Spanish then Brazilian rumba styles. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad There was much humanity about it all, as in Lawson's twinning of the lovely Northumbrian lullaby Bonny at Morn with a spirited, tango-like number which had been passed on to him, amid heartbreaking circumstances, by an Iranian refugee, and not least in Phil Alexander's winsome epilogue, Evening Song, with which they dispatched us on our way.
Telegraph
2 days ago
- Telegraph
Today's virtue-signalling composers have no idea what ‘political music' really is
The 50th anniversary of the death of Dmitri Shostakovich, which falls this month, is being celebrated by the musical world, especially the Proms and the Edinburgh International Festival. It's a timely anniversary, because Shostakovich was, among other things, the greatest composer of political music the world has ever seen – and political music is suddenly all the rage. We're surrounded by pieces that earnestly tackle climate change or the surveillance state. We ought to rejoice at this. Composers have always been accused of living in an ivory tower, turning for inspiration to ancient poetry, the stars, abstruse ideas about the world – anything but the lived reality of the world around them. Now it seems that some of them are waking up to the fact that there are burning issues to engage with. The trouble is that that lived reality doesn't seem to press very hard on these composers, and thus any political stance can feel like virtue signalling. Take Gabriella Smith's piece, Anthozoa, which laments the perils facing marine life. She does it with percussion sounds, that according to the composer are accurate portrayals of the tones of shrimps popping and parrotfish nibbling on coral reefs, which she recorded herself. This is the method of the detached documentary-maker in search of some street cred. Some years ago, David Lang reworked Beethoven's opera Fidelio, in a way which stifled the original's blazing heroism and impassioned cry for freedom, turning it into a worthy but unengaging homily about the ambiguities of human nature. Two recent pieces about the black experience in America, Joel Thompson's To Awaken the Sleeper and Carlos Simon's Portrait of a Queen, went the other way, going straight for the emotional jugular. As this newspaper's critic said, 'Had the composers come out on stage and shouted 'Feel Sad!', 'Now angry!', 'Now hopeful!', it would hardly have been less subtle.' I don't want to suggest such composers are insincere. It's just that there is no risk involved; they can be sure their views will be endorsed by all good, right-thinking people. Their only worry is whether they'll be nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. Compare their situation with that of Shostakovich. His worry was whether he would actually survive, when so many around him did not. His entire creative life was passed under the boot of Soviet communism, where to stray from the officially approved tone of heroic optimism or casting a critical eye on the Soviet Union could mean years in a penal colony, or worse. Simply to avoid the fate of many artists and writers, Shostakovich sometimes had to bend the knee and compose a heroic cantata glorifying an anniversary of the revolution, or some other approved topic such as the war against Nazi Germany. It's unfortunate that Shostakovich's best-known 'political piece', his Seventh Symphony, is also his least subtle, portraying the march of the invading Nazi army in a slow crescendo of crushing banality. Against that damning picture which suggests Shostakovich 'sold out', I'd like to offer a different image – the first performance of the composer's Fifth Symphony on Nov 21 1937. This was Shostakovich's attempt to rehabilitate himself after his opera Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District prompted a damning article on account of its alleged 'immorality' in the Soviet newspaper Pravda, very possibly written by Joseph Stalin himself. If ever there was a moment for a straightforward celebratory symphony to 'wipe the slate clean', this was it. Instead, the audience was faced with a slow movement of such tragic desolation that many were moved to tears. Were they thinking of Stalin's Great Terror, which had slaughtered perhaps as many as a million Soviet citizens? And that supposedly triumphant finale – why does it seem so grim, and why does the final major-key peroration seem so desperate and forced? This symphony cannot be dismissed as propaganda. It has that ambiguity that defines art, embodied in music of surpassing technical skill and supreme inspiration. Of course the same could be said about every great composer. What makes Shostakovich special is that every piece required a delicate negotiation between his passionately held beliefs in the sanctity of the human individual, his gleeful (and dangerous) fondness for parody and humour, his deep sympathy for the underdog (Jews in particular), and the necessity to present an acceptable public face, when one mistake could place him in mortal danger. This means that every piece Shostakovich ever wrote, even those as apparently abstract as his 15 string quartets, have a deeply paradoxical quality. They are political right down to their roots, and yet no music offers a more authentic portrait of a solitary suffering individual. That is what makes the music so potent, and so relevant. On his 50th anniversary we should salute Shostakovich for his courage and his immortal musical legacy, which offers a model of what 'political music' should be.
