The London Symphony orchestra are generously showing some videos of past concerts to be watched / listened to online during the covid lockdown. They are available for free on the orchetsra's YouTube channel, but of course, like every other arts organisation trying to stay afloat during this time, they would naturally be more than grateful for any donations you could send their way.
This particular concert was origianlly performed at The Barbican Centre in London in October 2019, with guest conductor Gianandrea Noseda.
The long programme started with 5 orchestral pieces from Britten's opera 'Peter Grimes'. Starting first with his orchestral suite of 'Four Sea Interludes' and then continuing with a Passacaglia. I have to admit to not being a huge Britten fan, I've never really been able to get into his music, although I have heard the Sea Interludes a good few times now. Written in 1944 the four are taken from various parts of the opera where a scene change is necessary, and are titled, 'Dawn', 'Sunday Morning', 'Moonlight' and 'Storm'. 'Storm' is the only one of the four which really stirs anything within me at all, and only that because the music lives up to it's title. I'd never heard the Passacaglia before and so that was interesting.
Prokofiev came next, and his long and demanding second piano concerto. To play the solo piano was Denis Matsuev. Prokofiev was a piano virtuoso himself and composed this piece mostly so that he could show off. His second concerto is one of the hardest to both interpret and perform in the standard concert repertoire. Interestingly the concerto is in 4 movements and is longer than most concertos, and here, the piano is the star of the piece taking precedence over the orchestra. For any pianist to play this they don't just need to be techically brilliant, but they require huge stamina too; this is no cakewalk!
Matsuev proved to be a very passionate and intense pianist. He had a deep understanding of and connection to the music, that much was clear, although I did think that perhaps he wasn't always technically 100% accurate. This was a live perofrmance though, and so, a certain amount of human error can be overlooked. His encore, Liadov's 'Music Box' was absolutely superb, and he gave a spellbinding interpretation of this piano miniature.
The final piece in the concert was my favourite of Shostakovich's symphonies, his 6th. Perhaps the most unconventional in many ways, and yet also perhaps the most conventional too. Allow me to extrapolate. First the symphony was composed in three movements. The first is longer than the second two put together and then some, and it is a largo - a very slow and ponderous tempo. This is followed by a short allegro (a scherzo), and a short presto, a very fast gallop to the finish line. Not only this but written at the time it was, 1939, and under the scrutiny of the Soviet Anti-Russian committee, he was more than conscious of trying not to offend. He was already in bother with them, and had seen friends and colleagues taken away, interrogated and even put to death, just because the powers that be interpreted their writings as being un-Russian. And so, he conformed and made the symphony much lighter and more retrospective than perhaps he would normally have done. The music is, in fact, some of Shostakovich's most lyrical, Romantic, and even classically-based scorings, and as such, departs from the atonal dissonance of his 5th symphony, and returns to music which would have been 'acceptable' to the authorities as well as pleasing to the ears of its audiences.
The orchestra played these works with undeniable skill and it was a privilege to be able to watch an orchestra play that under normal circumstances would be too far away for me. Noseda's conducting was connected and meaningful. I liked the way he allowed the music to breath under his baton, allowing unseen colours to emerge before the next chord or sequence is expressed. He had a nack of being able to wring about nuances in dynamics which have previously eluded me in both the Prokofiev and the Shostakovich, and this greatly impressed.
I am uncertain however why the members of the orchestra were allowed to dress so haphazzardly. This looked from an aesthetic point of view very wrong. I've never seen such a lackidaisical attitude to symphony orchestra dress-code before.
The LSO's online and detailed programme notes are not only very informative but aid the listener and guide them through some rather aurally challenging music, noting what to listen out for, and providing background on the score and composers. Never an overload, just enough to whet the appetite for further reading if interested.
Reviewer - Matthew Dougall
on - 23/5/20
No comments:
Post a Comment