United Kingdom Numerous: Valeriy Sokolov (viola), Harutyun Chkolyan, Karen Sirakanyan (duduk/zurna), Bournemouth Symphony Refrain, Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra / Kirill Karabits (conductor). Royal Pageant Corridor, London, 19.5.2024. (CK)
Franghiz Ali-Zadeh – Nagilar (Fairy Tales)
Nurymov – Symphony No.2
Garayev – Seven Beauties Suite
There was quite a lot of love within the Royal Pageant Corridor final Sunday. Three concert events in at some point, and a superb viewers for all three: the corridor was not full by any means, however not embarrassingly sparse both, and those that got here contributed absolutely to the standard of the event. Bravos, cheers, catcalls, standing ovations: this was no politically appropriate nod to unfamiliar music, however an absorbing and often thrilling voyage into the unknown.
Kirill Karabits and the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra introduced plums from greater than 60 works from Jap Europe and Central Asia that they’ve shared with their audiences over the past 15 years (it is rather excellent news that Karabits – rightly awarded an OBE for this achievement – will proceed his Voices from the East programme because the orchestra’s Conductor Laureate). In dialog with Tom Service he defined his long-standing want to increase the repertory and to discover the cultural hyperlinks between East and West: ‘The world turns into a magic place in case you combine the unmixable.’ He named three Russian composers he sees as milestones on the journey: Shostakovich (a lot influenced by Mahler), Prokofiev (turned extra in the direction of France), and Khachaturian: he remarked that though the latter’s music wouldn’t be performed, it’s ‘right here, within the air’: it’s Khachaturian who ‘paved the best way into the East’.
This primary live performance introduced music by composers from Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan. Franghiz Ali-Zadeh’s Fairy Tales captivated me without delay with its magnificence and strangeness: a baleful opening on decrease strings, a propulsive rhythm, a ghostly floating internet of sound on tuned percussion and marimba; a strong climax, a passage as delicate and glistening because the opening of Gurre-Lieder – the music appeared to be continually mutating, like a single organism within the deep, inflating and deflating. The majestic major-key ending on trumpets and trombones appeared to emerge organically from the orchestral tissue. Ravishing.
All through the day’s conversations between Karabits and Service there was an entertaining stress between Karabits’s intention of claiming as little as doable, letting the music converse for itself, and Service’s missionary zeal in telling us something which may assist us to know and recognize it. In introducing Nurymov’s Second Symphony Karabits contented himself with mentioning the significance of bells in Russian music (they have been, certainly, omnipresent all through the day): and the significance of storytelling in Turkmeni tradition – the music tells a specific story, however it’s as much as the listener to invent his personal. Service managed to slide in a number of nuggets – it was written in 1984, after the assassination of Gandhi, a plea for peace.
The symphony creates a world of drama and depth in underneath 20 minutes. The widespread thread is a rocking determine on two notes which seems in lots of guises: mournful on bassoons and violas, wealthy and darkish on the cellos, a strong chant accelerating right into a threatening march on the heavy brass, Shostakovich-like in its implacability. Then, in a transferring passage like a launch, the strings give it a extra optimistic side: however the music turns tragic, monumental, doggedly minor, heroic, recalling the climactic outburst within the finale of Shostakovich’s Fourth Symphony. The rocking theme returns as a chant for strings over a pp gong, and the symphony ends in darkness.
Garayev’s Seven Beauties Suite might grow to be an prompt basic: it begins with a gorgeously Romantic tapestry of sound – strings, harp, solo horn. I clearly misplaced my approach – I counted eight Beauties – however what the heck: suffice it to say that there was one which might be slotted into the Nutcracker Suite with out upsetting anybody, one other with an entertainingly Spanish flavour, one other the place a flute disports itself over a habanera-like pizzicato on decrease strings, one other the place the complete orchestral panoply brings widescreen Khachaturian to thoughts (Spartacus, Gayaneh)… Excessive time, absolutely, to cease making an attempt to explain the music and to salute, whole-heartedly, Karabits and his orchestra for his or her ability, stamina and dedication in bringing these difficult items to such vivid life.
Kancheli – Styx
Terterian – Symphony No.3
I’ve beforehand reviewed these forces’ efficiency of Kancheli’s Styx for viola, refrain and orchestra in Poole on Could 1st (evaluate right here). This time I used to be extra conscious of the function of the refrain – typically singing clusters of actual magnificence, typically flinging pebbles of sound, typically lowered to single syllables in single voices. The writing for solo viola, mediating between refrain and orchestra (Valeriy Sokolov, giving an excellent and transferring efficiency) is commonly full-bloodedly Romantic. Orchestrally, I used to be extra conscious of the discreetly bluesy edge the bass guitar offers to the decrease strings; the polystylism – the piano sounding typically like a spinet, typically like an previous musical field. Listening to Kancheli’s orchestra is like taking a look at a rock with completely different strata denoting completely different ages. Sudden extremes of dynamics – as on the finish, the place a sustained fortissimo nightmare all of a sudden ceases, leaving shreds of sound from the viola, and the dry sound of bows being scraped down strings. After which the ultimate shriek, like a Massive Bang. It was given a fairly magnificent efficiency.
Styx was Kancheli’s farewell to 2 of his associates, Terterian and Schnittke: so it was good to listen to music by the much less acquainted of the 2. Karabits (who met Terterian as a baby) suggested us: ‘Higher to know nothing about it. Let your feelings information you.’ Good recommendation. I’ll solely observe that a big orchestra – seven horns, two pianos, a lot percussion – is used very sparingly, although typically with nice virtuosity; that what we hear is commonly sound fairly than music; and that we appear continually on the very fringe of silence (‘Silence is pouring into this play’, wrote Samuel Beckett of Ready for Godot, ‘like water right into a sinking ship’). I don’t suppose I used to be the one one who jumped out of my seat when the pair of zurnas (double-reed pipes made out of apricot wooden) all of a sudden burst into sound like klaxons: and within the sluggish motion the entire corridor was mesmerised by the artistry of soloists Harutyun Chkolyan and Karen Sirakanyan on duduks, as one in every of them maintained a drone for minutes on finish in a rare demonstration of round respiratory whereas the opposite performed freely, lyrically, hauntingly. On the finish they returned for an encore and have been ecstatically obtained.
de Hartmann – Suite from La Fleurette Rouge
Anna Korsun – Terricone
Lyatoshinsky – Symphony No.4
West, for this third live performance, from Armenia and Georgia to Ukraine, the place Karabits was born right into a musical household earlier than the top the Soviet period. Ukraine is known for its folks music, he mentioned; so, for distinction, he had chosen three extra symphonic, much less ‘folky’ items. De Hartmann’s suite from La Fleurette Rouge (after a gap chord that immediately introduced Siegfried’s demise to thoughts) started with an ethereal trumpet solo over glinting woodwind, harps and percussion: extra Western sounding than the previous live performance’s music. Within the second motion a tune on violas and cellos developed right into a wide-ranging melody and a powerful, surging passage which had me considering of Bantock’s Hebridean Symphony, after which into an ingratiating tune in waltz time. The third featured solemn, chorale-like brass, embellished by the harps, who later had an prolonged cadenza on their very own, and a mild melody for the cellos. After a short, full of life pizzicato motion, the suite concluded with a vibrant dance that introduced Dvořák’s Slavonic Dances to thoughts.
It’s no accident that de Hartmann’s Suite has triggered associations with western European music: the identical can’t be mentioned of Anna Korsun’s extraordinary Terricone, a BSO fee. It begins as Kancheli’s Styx ended, although within the absence of a refrain it’s the orchestral musicians who scream: the opening is sheer pandemonium, all of the percussionists busy (one with a lion’s roar), trombones like air raid sirens. 4 percussionists rotate massive, shallow drums full of gravel, or scrape violin bows in opposition to cymbals and different steel edges; the strings sustain an insect-like exercise, like maggots squirming in decaying carrion; trumpets, trombones and tuba breathe into their mouthpieces. Extra screaming.
To what finish? The title of the piece refers to man-made mountains of mining waste – slag heaps – that pepper the panorama of Korsun’s native Donbas area. She doesn’t intend the music to be illustrative; however it’s a highly effective visible and aural expertise. It dropped at my thoughts mad King Lear’s paroxysm: ‘There’s hell, there’s darkness, there’s the sulphurous pit: burning, scalding, stench, consumption. Fie, fie, fie!’
Our journey reached its finish with the Fourth Symphony of the Ukrainian composer Boris Lyatoshinsky; and Kirill Karabits made it clear that it was a sombre finish. It expresses the strain between mild and darkness, fragility and brutality, and it brings no consolation: magnificence doesn’t discover a strategy to overcome the darkness. It’s written for our time, mentioned Karabits: his folks’s DNA is written into it. He didn’t must be extra specific. It leaves us, he mentioned, in a state of reflection and contemplation.
I made detailed notes on the music, however if you’re nonetheless studying you have got most likely had sufficient of that. Battle is joined, and rejoined; brazen, dissonant fanfares are pitted in opposition to passages of nice magnificence; repeatedly I marvelled on the readability of Karabits’s conducting in fiercely advanced music. There was a standing ovation: Karabits acknowledged it with a smile and an occasional bow, or a gesture in the direction of his thoroughbred orchestra; however largely he stood nonetheless, his eyes lowered. Reflection and contemplation. I puzzled what he was considering, because the destiny of his nation hangs within the steadiness between Russia and the West. As in Poole a fortnight earlier, he and the orchestra supplied us Valentin Silvestrov’s bittersweet Farewell Serenade as encore.
Although Lyatoshinsky’s symphony is a good distance from triumphalism, these three concert events have been a musical triumph for Karabits and the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra. And maybe greater than that. Someplace in Testimony, Shostakovich remarks that an important factor a Russian has is his reminiscence: I believe that this extraordinary day of music will stay within the memory-banks of its multi-national viewers for a really very long time.
Chris Kettle
