BBCSSO, 08/05/2015

Janacek : Sinfonietta
Shostakovich : Piano Concerto No. 1 (Garrick Ohlsson, piano; Mark O'Keeffe, trumpet)
Shostakovich : Symphony No. 15

BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra
Alpesh Chauhan

Tonight's conductor was supposed to be the orchestra's principal conductor, Donald Runnicles, but he was indisposed and replaced at, reportedly, very short notice by Alpesh Chauhan, who is Andris Nelsons's assistant at the CBSO, with an unchanged and pretty challenging programme.

Janacek's Sinfonietta is such an intense, exultant work, that when it's done, you feel sated, as if you'd had your fill for the evening.  It's a little disconcerting to have it at the start of the evening, therefore, and the quite extensive break while the stage was rearranged for the concerto was welcome, to let the last reverberations of that great bank of massed brass fade from the hall.  There were moments in this performance that were a little scrappy, the more fast-paced of Janacek's numerous, compact, repetitive, little thematic cells sometimes testing the articulation of whichever section was involved beyond its limits. Still, the third movement in particular featured some lovely playing from the strings, and the emotional quotient as a whole was more than satisfactory.

The Sinfonietta is a radiant work, confident and inspirational, even in its quieter moments.  Shostakovich, on the other hand, is never capable of that sort of untrammelled joy.  His humour always has a bitter edge to it, his confidence always carries at least a hint of defiance and desperation.  The Concerto for Piano, Trumpet and Strings (to give it its proper title) is an early work, emerging from six years of writing incidental music for the theatre and the cinema, and that shows, at least in the first movement.  There's a stream of almost carnivalesque tunes, polkas and waltzes, sometimes blatantly sentimental, but it's not unlike the way Weill can write sugary-sweet songs to almost vitriolic lyrics - you have to listen for the subtext.

I've heard versions of this where the trumpet comes across as a challenging figure, something disruptive, like a Till Eulenspiegel, mocking and independent.  O'Keeffe (who is the orchestra's principal trumpet) was more inclined to play the straight man tonight, and his muted rendition of the melancholic slow waltz of the second movement was particularly evocative, a forlorn, distant melody.  The net result was that the spotlight remained very firmly on the pianist, and Ohlsson performed with unerring precision and clarity, well complemented by crisp playing from the strings.

The final piece in tonight's programme comes from the other end of Shostakovich's career, his 15th, and last, symphony.  It's a strange piece, full of violent contrasts, humorous but cynical at first, then dominated by a succession of funereal marches in the remaining movements, that ends in a kind of cryogenic stasis, still and silent.  Like much of his music, there's a substantial autobiographical element in the music, but the meaning(s) of that element are never clear; it's certainly no Heldenleben, there's no sense of self-congratulation about it.  Chauhan kept the textures clear and well-defined, but with enough space to breathe as well.

[Next : 11th May]