SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL

Other Links

Editorial Board

Google Site Search

Kancheli, Yusupov and Silvestrov: Mischa Maisky (cello), London Philharmonic Orchestra, Vladimir Jurowski, Royal Festival Hall, 22.4.2009 (GD)

Kancheli: Another Step
Yusupov: Concerto for cello and orchestra (UK première)  
Silvestrov: Symphony No 5 (first UK public performance)


This concert greatly appealed to me as a singularly unusual event. Well, unusual in the context of mainstream London classical concert events. This one totally defied the standard museum fare which seems to be the imperative of the major London orchestras; the big standard warhorses usually composed in the 19th century! All of tonight’s composers (one in the audience) are certainly very much alive!  And tonight, as a consequence, the hall was half empty! But this did not seem to affect the very high standard of orchestral and solo playing. No doubt the innovative programming was Jurowski's idea and amongst the younger conductors before us today Jurowski is undoubtedly one of (if not the) most promising; not as yet succumbing to the global classical commodification process. And under his direction the LPO are playing as excellently as I remember them playing.

Tonight I was certainly convinced that these post-Shostakovich Soviet composers deserve to be played much more than they are: perhaps a little less Shostakovich and more of these! All these composers, although hugely different, depart from the Western post-Weberian experiments in serialism and the later 'post-modern' postures in minimalism. In some sense they also depart the grand rhetoric of Shostakovich; although they all retain elements of Russian/Eastern European folk music influence common to Shostakovich and Prokofiev. Here one could well include the Riga born composer Peteris Vasks.  It has often been noted by commentators (including tonight’s programme writer) that all these composers focus on the 'spiritual'. I would prefer to denote this element in terms of the introspective or even meditative. Although these terms in themselves are inadequate, I think they are more accurate than "spiritual” which has so many contradictory meanings especially if the German, French and Russian etymologies are taken into account.

The opening economic orchestral piece (12 minutes) 'Another Step' by the Georgian composer Giya Kancheli in some ways constituted a kind of mini-conspectus on the rest of the evenings music. Although formally it is quite orthodox in juxtaposing developing dramatic and lyrical sections in a tonally/harmonically conventional manner, in terms of content it resembles more a montage of sound textures like the repeated fff sforzatos on bass drum, timpani and lower woodwind/brass, which start to resemble the tone of parody; threatening, but also slighty hilarious in a burlesque manner; even shades of Wozzeck? All this is contrasted with what Kancheli calls a 'dramaturgy of tone colour', here registered on a an amplified off-stage viola played 'col legno', these melodies (sounding like a simple Georgian folk theme) are further transmogrified on tape; in the composers words, 'banal' but 'quite touching'. Jurowski and the LPO responded excellently with especially fine brass and percussion playing.

The sense of parody and 'fusion' continued in the Cello Concerto of Benjamin Yusopov, which received its première in Lucerne last year. The work is in four continuous movements and exploits (incorporates if that is the correct term?) elements from the Polish avant-gardists of the 1960's, Alfred Schnittke, gypsy melodies, popular music, and Russian folk music. As in the Kancheli piece, Yusupov gives us plenty of quite rhythmically complex dynamic contrasts in the lower brass and percussion. The semblance of the ascending modulations of a popular tune develop just before the first movements coda reaching a suspended A, only to be cut short by abrupt bi-tonal chords on the brass. The waltz-like second movement unleashes a kind of minor key parody of the Dies irae theme. The third movement features a scherzo-like parody (or pastiche?) of gypsy themes which finally give way to a banal Russian peasant tune which develops into a more Shostakovich-like grotesque folk dance full of sharp accents and carnivalesque glissandi in the brass. This develops and un-develops into a final reflective and beautifully restrained Epilogue. The cello part is not dominant in the standard Western sense of the virtuoso concerto solo, rather it comments and interweaves, in an increasingly more nuanced way, with the orchestra. Maisky, for whom the concerto was composed and premièred by, gave a totally involved performance of this extraordinary work. The excellence of the performance was unostentatiously acknowledged by the composer amid the audience applause.

Silvestrov has actually called his Fifth Symphony a 'post-symphony', commenting on the wider themes involved in the notion of the 'death of the symphony' And although in tonal/harmonic terms there is nothing of the avant-garde or experimental here, with a motif being taken from the Adagietto of Mahler's Fifth symphony, it is certainly very different from standard expectations of what a symphony should be, or sound like. Rather in the manner of that fascinating piece by Morton Feldman 'Coptic Light' (with more Russian connotations) Silvestrov's symphony demonstrates that a sense of sustained musical discourse of contrast can be achieved at a dynamic level that rarely exceeds the mezzo-forte. The wonderfully sonorous and diverse filigree of modulated lyricism Silvestrov achieves is initiated by the opening rumbles of distant/approaching thunder with tremolos for lower strings, timpani and brass, and complimented in a contrasting harmonic register of disruption at the beginning of the symphony’s dying-away coda. The developing filigree of tonal/bi-tonal lyricism, which constantly expands and develops, although not in the standard Western Sonata mode of progressive tonality, takes on as diverse forms as the chorale, ripples of delicate canon in quasi stretto style, and quite complex and interlocking clusters of harmonic/tonal modulation. Jurowski wonderfully delineated the many registers of Sivestrov's fascinatingly inventive orchestral strands; with woodwind and brass figurations interweaving in and out of the string harmonies. An extensive percussion section (including orchestral piano) added to the wonderfully evocative soundscape evincing almost Debussy-like shades of the exotic. 

It is to be hoped that Jurowski will continue  such innovative and fascinating programming.

Geoff Diggines


^{Back to Top                                                    Cumulative Index Page}