The article
The journalist says that The BBC Symphony Orchestra performed a moving concert at the Barbican, London.
The author emphasizes that this concert had something perfect at its core, book-ended with things that
were interesting and moving, sometimes even overwhelming, but problematic.
The first of those problematic things was Wolfgang Rihm’s Nahe fern 1, a
10-minute orchestral Adagio which evoked the Romantic fascination with twilight
(thus the title, which refers to the way a dim light makes nearby things seem
distant). It arose out of sighing figures in the deep bass, broken up with
silences. These heaved themselves up into the light, but it was never more than
a dim light, in which sad drooping horn figures evoking Brahms or possibly
Mahler drifted across the scene.
For Ivan Hewett a natural question arises "Was this a real musical experience, or merely a second-hand one?" It was hard to be sure, with music that shrouded itself so determinedly in dimness. One needs a bright light to distinguish true from fake. By contrast Shostakovich’s 11th Symphony, which ended the concert, was almost painfully bright. It painted the heroic but doomed 1905 Russian Revolution, in a long arch that rose from frozen-dawn stillness to deafening martial clamour.
For Ivan Hewett a natural question arises "Was this a real musical experience, or merely a second-hand one?" It was hard to be sure, with music that shrouded itself so determinedly in dimness. One needs a bright light to distinguish true from fake. By contrast Shostakovich’s 11th Symphony, which ended the concert, was almost painfully bright. It painted the heroic but doomed 1905 Russian Revolution, in a long arch that rose from frozen-dawn stillness to deafening martial clamour.
This journalist maintains that the impact of Shostakovich’s symphonies is always magnified by our knowledge
of the political and personal torment behind them. And I can't but agree with this assertion.
This lends them weight, but also shields them from criticism. Reverence in the face of unimaginable suffering gets in the way of spontaneous response. But last night I found myself rebelling at the sheer brute insistence of the music, which all the BBC SO’s fervency and conductor Ingo Metzmacher’s shrewd pacing couldn’t disguise.
This lends them weight, but also shields them from criticism. Reverence in the face of unimaginable suffering gets in the way of spontaneous response. But last night I found myself rebelling at the sheer brute insistence of the music, which all the BBC SO’s fervency and conductor Ingo Metzmacher’s shrewd pacing couldn’t disguise.
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