Petrenko conducts the RPO at the RFH

The RPO is going from strength to strength these days and there was no mistaking the enthusiasm of players and audience despite the customary noises off: bronchial intrusions, mobile phone calls, the occasional whir of air conditioning, the odd dropped beaker. Petrenko began with one of his well-intended contextual introductions, delivered in endearingly broken English which, like Sir Georg Solti’s, seems curiously unaffected by long-term residency in the UK. The message to be found in tonight’s bill of fare was ultimately one of hope amid present darkness.

That said, the performance of Shostakovich’s Tenth, a Petrenko staple if ever there was one, was not without controversy. The opening Moderato was conceived in one breath with minimum rhetorical pauses between sections and the feeling of an abstract symphonic allegro rather than a frozen cityscape under authoritarian rule. Most listeners will feel that the Tenth has a double purpose: to satisfy as a universal entity while encapsulating implicit messages concerning personal identity and integrity. We can’t be sure that the discourse is intended to carry the meanings we associate with it and the 50-minute playing time specified in the printed orchestral score is usually exceeded. Not so here. Carefully terraced dynamics built waves of tension until the central climax was reached without too much effortful grinding of gears. And yet the whiff of stiff-backed efficiency was not necessarily a plus. The short and violent scherzo is often casually described as ‘a musical portrait of Stalin’ although the only verifiable source for this is Testimony, the much-disputed Shostakovich memoir. Several of the composer’s acquaintances keep the handbrake on, whatever their attitude to the Stalin myth. No such caution tonight. The gloves were off and this was scorching enough to silence the sanatorium. The curiously conceived autobiographical Allegretto was superbly characterized in every department. Invidious perhaps to single out Richard Ion’s bassoon but he had a lot to do. That the finale had a passing moment of discombobulation can be attributed to the whirlwind tempo of its faster sections. A partial standing ovation was assured. 

Earlier in the night the Beethoven demonstrated the versatility of the RPO as well as the superb old world artistry of Benjamin Grosvenor. Neither party presented Beethoven with an iron fist in a gracious, chamber-oriented account which might once have been characterized as ‘feminine’. With the band radically scaled down (four double basses instead of eight, six cellos and so forth, no antiphonal violins) the accompaniment was intriguing – vibrato rationed, phrase ends trailing off by design, everything calculated to give Grosvenor the scope to sparkle and inflect. In keeping with his fresh, Chopinesque interpretation, the pianist avoided Beethoven’s stylistically more advanced mega-cadenza option in the first movement. Minor details were underlined to exquisite effect, runs quietly breathtaking, nothing overbearing or unduly percussive. A golden age encore followed which this writer was sadly unable to identify.

Opening the night, a real rarity: an early work by a composer renowned for her uniquely fierce brand of devotional utterance. This, however, was mainstream socialist realism from 1949 even if the choice of subject matter did not preclude defiant undertones as Petrenko explained in his talk. The atmosphere is perhaps surprisingly uneasy. Clocking in at a little over ten minutes the score might be characterized as Mussorgsky meets Vaughan Williams while admitting the odd echo or anticipation of Shostakovich, Ustvolskaya’s teacher and more. Most striking is a kind of obstinacy, both in the deliberately four-square treatment of rhythm and the schematic relationship of text and music. Soloist Yuriy Yurchuk was a great asset, assuring authenticity with a lyrical bass instrument not large, just perfectly formed.