BBCSSO: Shostakovich Symphony No. 5
City Halls, Glasgow - 09/03/23
Alpesh Chauhan, conductor | Pablo Ferrández, cello
The BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra’s 2022-23 City Halls season continued on the evening of 9th March with the welcome return of Associate Conductor Alpesh Chauhan in a programme of just two works. Richard Strauss’ hilariously satirical tone poem, based on Cervantes’ tale of the self-caricaturing, inept knight-errant Don Quixote, comprised the first half. The programme’s colourful tagline, “Riveting, Enthralling, Defiant Shostakovich”, promised the Soviet-era master’s most popular symphony, his Fifth, after the interval. The concert was broadcast live on Radio 3 and was very well attended (indeed, booking for seats in the choir balcony had opened barely a day before the performance and it too was well-filled). My praise for the BBC’s successful efforts in re-growing the post-pandemic Glasgow audience with attractive programming, creative publicity and engaging world-class artists must, however, be muted in a week in which they have announced the proposed disbanding of the BBC Singers, who in this season alone have contributed to such memorable performances as Ravel’s ‘Daphnis and Chloe’ and Bach’s ‘Magnificat’.
The eponymous Don is portrayed musically by a solo cello, and the role was played on Thursday by the same Spanish cellist whose masterful characterisation of Bloch’s ‘Schelomo’ had wowed the Glasgow audience back in December, Pablo Ferrández. That programme was also conducted by Alpesh (and also featured his glorious interpretation of another Russian masterpiece, Rimsky-Korsakov’s ‘Scheherazade’). The collaboration was once again a happy one. The role of Quixote’s long-suffering squire Sancho Panza fell to Principal Violist Scott Dickinson and he played it with exquisite whimsy and the richest tone. Every nuance of Strauss’ ingenious picture-painting score received the fullest expression and advocacy: the creaking windmills at which the hapless Don tilts, the braying herd of sheep in which he gets lost, his imagined aerobatic flight astride a wooden steed (complete with wind machine) and his encounter with the lovely rustic Dulcinea (portrayed by Laura Samuel’s sweet violin tone), to name but a handful, were all quite superb. Numerous other solos also shone, in particular from Jonathan Hollick (tenor tuba) and Simon Butterworth (bass clarinet). Quite excellent.
Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony was the first of the fifteen that I got to know, when I was still in primary school, from an LP of Karel Ančerl with the Czech Phil. It made a deep impression then, one that has never left me. The story of its genesis, at the height of Stalin’s purges when Stalin himself had attended a Moscow performance of the composer’s hugely successful opera ‘Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk’, found it abhorrent and ordered a damning (and threatening) review to be published in Pravda, becomes no less chilling with the passage of time. Shostakovich feared for his life and withdrew his Fourth Symphony from rehearsals, believing it would further enrage Stalin. The Fifth is a masterpiece on every level. Musically, it is compelling and dramatic, approachable yet evidently profound. It managed to exemplify an outer veneer of irreproachable adherence to optimistic Soviet Realism, yet no truly unindoctrinated listener can miss the ironic undercurrents of defiance, anger against injustice and an impassioned plea against oppression. A strong performance must reveal all these layers yet avoid destroying Shostakovich’s carefully woven ambiguity that makes its first appearance in this work. Alpesh achieved this marvellously with our wonderful BBCSSO. Unforgettable.
So yes, the BBC continues to spoil us with a season of inspired performance. But I finish with a plea. In a week in which the broadcaster has been seen to bow cravenly to pressure from right-wing government, let us have no more talk of closure or shrinking of performing arts centres of excellence or the ensembles themselves. Just gonnae no.