The star of the evening was the young man from Novosibirsk, Russia’s third largest city. Mikhail Simonyan in his early twenties, played his Giuseppe Gagliano violin made in 1769, with astonishing expertise. He was playing Shostakovich’s Violin Concerto No 1 with its dark and fearful undertones. And he played for thirty fives minutes without music, I overheard somebody say in the interval.
Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975) wrote his Violin Concerto No 1 in an atmosphere of Soviet repression. His music had already been banned in 1936 because he had been called an enemy of the people. He was again in 1948 - just as he had completed his Violin Concerto No 1; so it was not first performed until 1955.
In her talk beforehand, Katherine Wren the viola player, circulated amongst us a fascinating paper showing the link between the night’s conductor, Kristjan Järvi, the lithe and popular son of the Royal Scottish National Orchestra’s Conductor Laureate and Shostakovich. She went on to explain the interesting decision to play Sibelius’s last two symphonies in the same programme and, importantly, to have no gap between them. It was a well planned talk full of musical detail and a little viola playing to demonstrate a point she was making.
Jean Sibelius (1865-1957) was born in Finland and wrote seven symphonies. No 6 appeared in 1923, and No 7 in 1924. Indeed he wrote nothing more of consequence for the rest of his life. Whereas No 6 has the normal four movements, No 7 is one large movement and on the night the move from one symphony to the other was almost imperceptible. It worked, indeed it was a triumph. The liveliness of Sibelius lifted the gloom that was the Shostakovich and I for one would willingly come back soon to hear both Sibelius Symphonies played again in the same fashion.
Event: Friday 18 February 2011, 7.30pm