A transformed universe

In a case in the museum room of the Kiev Philharmonia are some relics of Ukraine's 'God of the voice', the magnificent bass Boris Gmirya. It somehow reduces his scale to see his glasses, collar and (pre-made) bow-tie - a reminder that even Gods may have human - or even clay - feet. As I was just about to hear a performance of Shostakovich's Fourth Symphony - which I will presently eulogize - I was reminded of an occasion when Gmirya showed he was all too human. In 1962 he was Shostakovich's choice to sing the solo role in his controversial 13th Symphony, 'Babi Yar', with Mravinsky conducting. Under Party pressure, both withdrew. (Kondrashin, who did conduct, received a phone call during the dress rehearsal from the Minister of Culture, 'suggesting' that he might not be well enough to go on stage).

Twenty-five years earlier, the Fourth Symphony had a similarly traumatic transit. It was scheduled for a premiere in Leningrad; but the composer, having been denounced earlier that year in Pravda for his opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, found it expedient to withdraw it at the last minute, producing a year later the (superficially) more conformist Fifth Symphony. The Fourth was not heard until 1961 (Kondrashin conducting) and its reappearance at the time when 'Babi Yar' was gestating is surely not coincidental.

In tonight's spectacular performance by the Ukraine National Symphony Orchestra under Volodymyr Sirenko, it was clear why Shostakovich might have had his second thoughts in 1936. for this is a profoundly subversive work at the deepest levels. Clearly Mahlerian in its scale, its length, its use of sleazy waltzes and bird song, its shattering climaxes and its episodes of solo woodwind and brass instruments exposed against the orchestra like dissidents in conformist societies, it is also Mahler though a distorting mirror; or maybe Mahler modified by one of Einstein's tensors of relativity that can transform one universe - the Austro-Hungarian Empire - into another, the Soviet Union, both different and the same. These are the sort of ideas - even in an inexplicit art such as music - that no authoritarian state could tolerate.

As with Mahler, however, if this music is not driven, it becomes merely bloated. There was no risk of this with Sirenko and his band. Not only the orchestra, but also the audience, were totally gripped as Shostakovich's long paragraphs unfolded. The loose symphonic structure of the two lengthy outer movments renders them sequences of striking aural tableaux, whose contrasts suggest an alienation and individualism clearly at odds with the political strictures of 'popular culture'. The middle movement evaporates in an inane dance-rhythm; the last movement ends in dark, brooding chords. By the end of the work, we had all been expertly led on a most disturbing voyage. The audience rose as one to give conductor and orchestra - and the spirit of Shostakovich - a standing ovation. This was the fnest performance of this strange work I have ever heard, and indeed was the best Shostakovich performance I have heard in years.

Culture shock

Following Jonathan's very succesful recital on Wednesday (see post below - one member of the audience sweetly e-mailed me 'it was nice and wonderful. I got a lot of positive emotions') Friday's got off to a challenging start, with the enormous 'Concord' Sonata of Charles Ives and the terrifying Concerto for solo piano no.4 of Michael Finnissy. Introducing the concert I tried to prepare the audience for what to expect, telling them to look out for the hymns, rag-time and Beethoven in the Ives, and comparing the Finnissy to 'extreme sport' and commending its exhilaration (Russian word 'voozdushevlyayushchii', quite exhilarating in itself).

The Ives went like a dream -the roller-coaster of the Finnissy was not too much inhibited by my failure to turn page 12 in time (a moment of high drama which I hope has been captured in Yuriy's video of the event). It really is a shocking - in the sense of electrifying - piece - like the jazz pianist Cecil Taylor on speed. The audience more than rose to the occasion and gave Jonathan rapturous applause, (though there were a few quitters at the interval, including T. who gave the diplomatic excuse that she had to relieve her baby-sitter).

Those who stayed on, including the great Ukrainian composer Valentin Silvestrov (on the right in the picture above, with Jonathan after the recital), were treated to a magnificent second half which included music by Silvestrov himself (two serenades for solo violin beautifully performed by Sonia Suldina and a piece for violin and piano in memory of Tchaikovsky), and the heroic Symphony for solo piano of Alkan, one of the peaks of 19th-century romantic pianism. The audience left only after demanding two encores (Scriabin and Revutsky) with standing ovations.

An amazing and memorable evening which was subsequently celebrated, to the accompaniment of a good deal of vodka, at the highly commended 'Bundesbar' in Lysenko Street, including toasts to the British Alkan Society, who helped with sponsorship for this mini-tour.

Incidentally the location of the recital, the House of Actors (left), is itself a remarkable building - formerly the Kenesa (synagogue) of the Kyiv Karaites (a Jewish sect originating from the Crimea, none of whom alas seem to be left in the capital).

After 100 years.....

In 1910 the young English composer Arnold Bax was in Russia when he encountered a beautiful Ukrainian girl, Natalia Karginska. Infatuated, he pursued her to Kyiv. The affair ended unhappily, but it did inspire him to write his first piano sonata. On Wednesday, after nearly a hundred years, this piece of British/Ukrainian music got its first performance in the city where it was composed. The idea was that of my friend, the gifted pianist Jonathan Powell, who when he heard I was coming out here asked whether it might be possible to arrange a recital. With the aid of local musical maven Yuriy Suldin we actually fixed up two concerts - the first one on Wednesday, when, apart from the Bax, (which turns out to be truly passionate and ends with the bells of Kiev pealing in all registers of the piano), Jonathan also played Rachmaninoff, Schubert, the Ukrainian composer (and teacher of Horowitz) Felix Blumenfeld, and works by the contemporary British composer John White and by Powell himself. The audience response on Wednesday was highly enthusiastic if slightly stunned!

Tomorrow's concert is even more challenging, including music by Ives, Alkan, Finissy and Konstantin Silvestrov. The Ives 'Concord Sonata' and the Alkan 'Symphony for solo piano' are two of the peaks of the romantic repertoire, enormously demanding in technique and interpretation. For the Silvestrov, Jonathan will be joined by members of the Ukrainian string quartet PostScriptum. Michael Finnissy's 'Concerto for solo piano no.4', which has been claimed as the most difficult piece ever written for the instrument, is the musical equivalent of 'extreme sport' ....It will be a test to see whether the audience and/or the piano survive. Or whether I do, as I wil be turning the pages.....

Fantastic

Simply the greatest live performance I have ever heard of Berlioz's 'Symphonie Fantastique' at the Kiev Philharmonia this evening. Not only that, but it was preceded by a lip-smacking version of his 'Harold in Italy', with the Israeli violist, Avri Levitan. The National Academic Symphony Orchestra under Mikola Dyadyura gave superb accounts of these masterworks, greatly assisted by the acoustics of the hall. The neo-classic Philharmonia building was originally a gentleman's club. The auditorium seats maybe four or five hundred (it was packed), and its sound is particularly clean and pure. So when you get a large orchestra giving its all, you are in the thick of it. These were lurid performances, but deliberately so - Berlioz would have loved them, I am sure - the almost over-ripe romanticism risked conjuring up some of the more bizarre canvasses of Antoine Wiertz, but at the same time Dyadyura had calculated every sound and gear-change and his players responded superbly. I liked the touch of having the harps either side of the orchestra up front (see picture), which swept us into the ballroom scene - an effect mirrored in the Witches' Sabbath when we had two sets of tubular bells up in the gallery, taking the 'Dies Irae' alternately. Cunningly, a virtue was thus even made of the limited size of the Philharmonia stage. 10+ out of 10.

One step beyond....

Malcolm Bradbury, in his all-too accurate spoof guidebook to the Warsaw pact countries of the 1980s,'Why Come to Slaka?' was perhaps the first to elaborate on the toxic potential of the national operas of Central and Eastern Europe. I have been caught before by these - notably by Paliashvili's 'Absalom and Eteri' in Tbilisi, some hours of excruciating tedium - but ever eager to explore repertoire unknown to me, and hoping that I might stumble on the exception to the rule, I went to Kyiv's excellent opera house to hear 'Zaporozhets za Dunayem' by Semyon Gulak-Artyemovsky (don't ask 'who he?' - I had never heard of him before and won't bother if I never do again). Problems start with the title, which means 'The Zaporozhye Cossack beyond the Danube' - the plot, such as it is, dealing with a Cossack settlement in the the late 18th century Ottoman Empire (i.e. on the 'wrong side' of the Danube), whence they had been driven by.....well, the opera doesn't explain what they were doing there. That's partly because its problems began when it was written in the 1860s, when the Tsar's censors didn't want any references to historic disputes with Turkey....you see, you're bored already, and I haven't even started on the opera itself. The only slightly interesting bit was a set of Cossack dances in Act II, and even those were not original I suspect but had been inserted in a desperate bid to keep the audience awake. Needless to say the locals loved it all. I hope I don't get deported for dissing it like this.

Fortunately the musical balance was redeemed by a performance the next day at the Philharmonia by a young Ukrainian string quartet, who go under the unusual name of 'Post Scriptum'. They have a wonderfully sweet tone, and gave the best live performance of Tchaikovsky's 1st Quartet I have ever heard, together with a passionate rendition of Schubert's 'Death and the Maiden' and an engaging account of Schumann's 3rd. I am hoping we may be able to get them to perform at the 2010 Levoca music festival.