BBCSSO and RCS: Shostakovich Symphony No. 11
City Halls, Glasgow - 17/06/23
Martyn Brabbins and Emilie Godden, conductors | Richard Watkins, horn
Whilst the Thursday night City Halls 2022-23 series of concerts concluded in May, the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra have had a few more baskets of goodies to offer, none more so than the night of Saturday 17th June, when they were joined by students from the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, under the baton of Martyn Brabbins, in a performance of Shostakovich’s epic 11th Symphony. In the first half of the programme, as a culmination of a few days of an intensive conducting RCS/BBCSSO partnership workshop, RCS Leverhulme Conducting Fellow and violinist Emilie Godden directed the BBCSSO and soloist Richard Watkins in a performance of Glière’s Horn Concerto. The concert opened with a world première: ‘Entropy’ by RCS composition student Mingdu Li, winner of the Walter & Dinah Wolfe Memorial Prize. The concert was well-attended and a restricted number of printed programmes were available. The programme was genially and jovially introduced by Martyn himself.
As a music-loving mathematical physicist, by both training and inclination, I am always intrigued by and receptive to music inspired by the metaphors of theoretical physics. Back in April, I had the experience of meeting Icelandic composer Anna Thorvaldsdóttir and hearing her piece ‘Metacosmos’, inspired by the idea of falling into a black hole and emerging into a parallel universe. Mingdu Li’s composition, ‘Entropy’, inspired by the measure of disorder which, according to the Second Law of Thermodynamics, is always increasing, leading ultimately and inexorably to the decomposition of the universe into pure radiant heat energy, so-called ‘heat death’, invites comparison. I can say immediately that Mingdu has nothing to fear from such a comparison. The music has a compelling ever-present pulse, conveying the sense of inexorability as effectively as Thorvaldsdóttir. The orchestration is masterly and, of course, the BBCSSO under Brabbins awarded it the ultimate advocacy. The element of human response to a cosmos that seems indifferent, if not hostile, to life is represented by quotation. Two composers in particular are quoted. Mahler, with his preoccupation with Ewigkeit (eternity) is perhaps not surprising, but greater, and recurrent, prominence is given to a phrase from the first movement of Ravel’s String Quartet. Seeing Mingdu’s thanks to Martyn and the orchestra on Twitter, I felt emboldened to ask whether the Ravel quotation signifies order stubbornly manifesting itself in the midst of chaos. Her response was most enlightening: “I’ve tried to not limit the ‘Entropy’ to just despair, but rather embrace the fact that we humans will simply return to our origins. Therefore, a certain amount of warmth and order amidst the chaos is needed to better serve my vision”. “For you are dust, and to dust you shall return”. She added “… also, I’ve learned a lot from Ravel”. Well, if her skilful orchestration is anything to go by, that is most definitely true. I am a new fan, and eagerly await her future compositions no less than those of Thorvaldsdóttir. She was of course present at the concert and was on stage to acknowledge the enthusiastic applause of the Glasgow audience.
Despite its mid-20th century year of composition (1950) and its use of an orchestra augmented with a beefy brass section and harp, Glière’s Horn Concerto (a first hearing for me) is in every sense a virtuosic late Romantic concerto, and unmistakably Russian, with orchestral colour that would not be out of place in a Borodin score, notwithstanding occasional Schumannesque and Elgarian flashes. From the start of the march-like Allegro, Richard Watkins’ phenomenal playing embodied Beethoven’s famous dictum: “To play a wrong note is insignificant; to play without passion is inexcusable.” The programme notes revealed that the cadenza is largely improvisatory, the composer having provided only the sketchiest outline. As ever, the BBCSSO, no strangers to living dangerously, were willing accomplices in this bullish enterprise, while Emilie Godden proved a capable and indeed elegant helmswoman to the voyage of musical mischief. The Andante, rhapsodic and romantic, allied a Russian melody to an ambience redolent of Richard Strauss, whose own two horn concerti frame his compositional career from 19th to 20th centuries. After a Moderato introduction, the Allegro vivace Russian folk dance finale is a joyous romp, with a solemn brass chorale and a hectic climax. Good clean fun and very well received by the Glasgow audience.
But we were really there for the headline work, the Shostakovich. Subtitled ‘The Year 1905’, the second of its four movements, played attacca, graphically and uncompromisingly narrates the events of the 9th January in that year, when a peaceful protest by a starving multitude was massacred by Tsar Nicholas II’s palace guard. The music is vivid, filmic and powerful and continues the great advances in the composer’s dramatic musical language, especially orchestration and counterpoint, that had emerged in the landmark 10th Symphony. The first movement sets the scene in the empty palace square in St. Petersburg, chill and snow-covered (high strings and harp chords), bored soldiers on the palace battlements (muted trumpets) exchange a joke (clarinet), while revolutionary songs are quoted hinting at the injustice and oppression that underlie the social order in Imperial Russia. These rise to anguished prominence and fade to despair. A subdued but insistent ominous figure on timpani hints at the suppressed anger that might burst forth – the scene may be still but it is not truly peaceful. The second movement charts the starving citizens emerging from the side streets and assembling on the square, more revolutionary songs are quoted in a supplicatory tone. The chill stillness of the scene returns momentarily. Then a demonic fugue starts in the low strings, building through the whole orchestra – the soldiers are advancing towards the crowd, rifles loaded and bayonets fixed. The music that depicts the killing frenzy is almost unbearably graphic – I know of no other music that so fully captures the full mind-numbing horror and shock of a massacre. Suddenly all is still again, but the formerly monochrome picture now contains red. The third movement, an elegy leading to a funeral march, starts with grief-stricken melody on the violas over cello pizzicato. It builds to an outpouring of grief and rage before subsiding to a reprise of the viola melody. The finale, defiant and assertive, serves notice on tyrants: your days are numbered. The closing pages quite literally hammer the message home on full orchestra, including all 5 percussionists with the tubular bells prominent in the mix. Unforgettable.
Martyn Brabbins, who studied conducting in St. Petersburg (when it was called Leningrad), brings a special perspective to this music, and of course the BBCSSO and the 14 lucky RCS players who participated in the performance responded by playing their hearts out, resulting in a very special experience for all present, players and audience. In particular, I cannot imagine that any of the 14 RCS students will ever forget this very special concert.
Finally, a wee snippet of trivia about an inexplicable musical coincidence. The demonic fugue representing the advancing soldiers in the second movement bears an uncanny, almost note-for-note resemblance to a similar fugue in Franz Waxman’s score for the 1951 film, ‘A Place in the Sun’, composed about half a decade before the symphony. There is absolutely no way that Shostakovich could have seen the movie in that time. Weird, but true.