FeaturedLondonMusicReview

Patricia Kopatchinskaja plays Shostakovich – Southbank Centre, London

Reviewer: Susan Elkin

Conductor: Edward Gardner

Thoughtful programming by the London Philharmonic Orchestra brings together three works written in different countries within 32 years of each other in the first half of the 20th century. Moreover, to an extent they were all the product of political tension, anxiety and anguish.

Benjamin Britten’s Sinfonia da Requiem (1940) reflects his pacifism and disquiet about the escalating war. Commissioned by the Japanese government and then rejected, it was first performed in New York in 1941. In this performance, conductor Edward Gardner brings out the grief of the first movement and ensures that muted trumpets and xylophone sound as sinister as they should in the second. And the way he lets the 3|4 rhythms just die away at the end is very moving.

Patricia Kopatchinskaja arrives on stage barefoot, wearing a strange cover-all lacy dress, eccentrically holding her violin and music aloft as she walks through the orchestra to play the very challenging Shostakovich A minor concerto (1948). Music on stand and eyes glued to it, she starts the rather subdued, brooding opening Nocturne, which expresses, one assumes, some of the composer’s worries about working in Stalinist Russia. As the piece continues, she becomes more and more animated, almost animalistic, hunched fiercely over her instrument, leaping up and down and, at one point, almost colliding with Gardner on the podium.

She is intensely dramatic to watch. It’s very unusual to see a performer actually out of breath as she is at the end of the second movement and she is evidently exhausted at the end. Her sound, though, is terrific, with impressive dynamic range and a pretty spectacular cadenza, during which Gardner neatly turns the page of her music.

And so, after the interval, to the glories of Sibelius’s 5th symphony (1915), probably the best known and loved of his seven. The orchestra has now reduced forces: we don’t need all that percussion or harps, tuba and keyboard players for this work. Familiar as the piece is, Gardner takes the first movement at a speed which makes it sound fresh and never allows it to become maudlin or sentimental.

High spots include the brass fanfares, bassoon solo and the strings’ incisive “knitting” in the first movement. The Andante gives us nicely nuanced dynamic and tempo changes. And Gardner more than catches the grandiosity of the final movement in which the main motif is rising thirds, played and developed across the texture. And excitement builds clearly as we head through the rich mellifluous melody towards the six climatic chords at the end.

Reviewed on 4 October 2024

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Vibrant orchestral concert

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The Reviews Hub London is under the editorship of Richard Maguire. The Reviews Hub was set up in 2007. Our mission is to provide the most in-depth, nationwide arts coverage online.

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