BY GILLIAN WILLS
Queensland Symphony Orchestra presents The Russians
QPAC Concert Hall, 17 September
How do you like your coffee? A long black, flat white, cappuccino or espresso? Perhaps the same can be asked about performances of Russian music, especially music by the big brand legends of Tchaikovsky, Shostakovich and Rachmaninov.
QSO’s Russian selection was intense, romantic, ironic, lush, deliciously dark and luxuriously gloomy. Truth is that this entertaining and enthusiastically applauded program accommodated a variety of caffeine-infused choices.
Russian conductor Lukasz Borowicz was an enthusiast. In Tchaikovsky’s Voyevoda Symphonic Ballade, the performance had colour, energy and sweeping momentum driving to the heart of phrases, but an in-depth interpretative flair was missing. And yet, the performance stirred the audience and blazed with the promise of what was to come. Tchaikovsky supposedly hated this work and threw it away. But it was secretly recovered and the chance to hear some of this much-played composer’s off-the-beaten-track repertoire was an intriguing adventure.
Talking of adventure, Shostakovich’s Cello Concerto No. 1 is a hazardous journey of multiple terrains and transports the listener to a realm of stark, angry, ironic, resigned, hopeful, plaintive, melting emotion. At times, it percolates with manic energy and, at others, caustic doom. No surprise this concerto represents one of the most difficult cello concertos to play, because Shostakovich shows no mercy for the instrument, which he plunders for kaleidoscopic colour and multiple effects, the content often cast with fiendish virtuosic intensity.
‘Play it so that flies drop dead in mid-air’, Shostakovich once said about his violin sonata. It would be great to know what counsel he gave Rostrapovich, who first performed this daring juggernaut of Olympian challenge.
A tennis coach supposedly can tell whether or not a player will win by the way he or she walks onto the court. And perhaps the same can be said of how a performer walks on stage. Soloist Kian Soltani conveyed supreme confidence when he readied himself to play. He had that compelling, faraway look that comes from being already deeply immersed in the music.
From the first four notes, Soltani pulled the audience inside Shostakovich’s brilliant, blistering work. Soltani scaled the mercurial ups and downs and played with bountiful colour. Each of the cello entries were dressed in a new sound, through another vivid voice. Soltani impressively revealed how the cello’s part is percussive, angular, wild, folksy, ironic and yet brushed with joy and lyricism.
It was in the second movement the cello sang the melodic lines poetically. Overall, there were some nooks and crannies left relatively unexplored, but the more than creditable performance registered Soltani as future cello royalty with magnetic pull and magical power, a musical treasure.
After the devastating and unsuccessful premiere of his First Symphony, Rachmaninov suffered a kind of composer’s block. In his Second Symphony, it’s as if he poured everything musically irresistible into the mix: beautiful melodies, rich harmonies, gleaming glassy textures; a gorgeous sonic world in which he luxuriates in each of the orchestral sections’ sound-making potential.
The emotional content of this symphony is either on a glorious high or building towards one, and along the way there are nosedives into despair and a glorious wallow in gloom. Laced with multiple emotional surges and climaxes, certain performances can almost make the audience seasick with too many, samey overblown peaks and lows. Borowicz bypassed this excessive approach and steered the QSO’s brass, woodwind and strings into safer waters with carefully phased dynamic levels. It was a classy delivery and one which revealed the orchestra’s strengths, with a superb contribution from the French horn. Was this a cappuccino or an espresso in Russian drama? Probably neither, or a mix of both; definitely not a flat white, and, in the words of someone behind me, ‘outstanding’. Without a doubt it was a satisfying and enjoyable concert.
Gillian is the author of Elvis and Me: How a world-weary musician and a broken ex-racehorse rescued each other, available through Finch Publishing.
Image supplied.
