Last week’s Siberian weather seemed to penetrate the Dome on Saturday evening when the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Marin Alsop, played Shostakovich’s 5th Symphony. This is a truly chilling work when the music is as strongly characterised as it was here; the rhythms pounding out ferociously and ponderously, the melodies icy and inconsolable. Written at the height of Stalin’s purges in 1937, this was the Russian winter of the soul.
Before the interval we heard a work of the same era, again the product of a Russian melancholic but this time composed during the leisure time of a travelling virtuoso. So Rachmaninov’s Paganini Rhapsody is consequently more urbane. But this tough performance, led by the proficient young Russian pianist Denis Kozhukhin, probed into the more disturbing elements lying beneath its sparkling surface.
The concert began with Beethoven’s Overture Leonora No 3, which duly highlighted the gloom that followed. In Beethoven’s Romantic age it was still possible to have faith in the triumph of good over evil but that was no longer so by the 1930s, whether you were an exile doomed never again to visit his homeland (Rachmaninov) or an artist struggling to survive in Stalin’s Russia (Shostakovich).
That a concert could be so thought-provoking indicates not only an interesting programme, but performances of quality and performers of integrity. The BSO seemed inspired by their distinguished conductor emeritus, conducting the kind of repertoire she is renowned for. They deserve the support of Brighton’s music lovers.
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