Gergiev, Mariinsky, Tchaikovsky Symphonies no 4 & 5

Valery Gergiev and the Mariinsky Orchestra with Tchaikovsky Symphony no 4 in F minor op 36 and Symphony no 5 in E minor op 64 from the Mariinsky's own label.  Gergiev has conducted Tchaikovsky numerous times, often with interesting approaches, and with many different orchestras over a long period, but his rapport with the Mariinsky is very close. Together they've done Tchaikovsky so often that most of what they do is worth hearing. This performance is fairly well known, recorded at the Salle Pleyel in January 2010, it has been released on DVD and previously on CD together with Tchaikovsky's Symphony no 6, which is being re-released separately.  This new release is an opportunity to focus on the relationship between the fourth and fifth symphonies.

Tchaikovsky's Symphony no 4 was written in the same period as his opera Eugene Onegin.  An admirer sent him a love letter and precipitatively they married. The experience was a disaster : the composer allegedly attempting suicide to escape. Life reflecting art. This intensity comes through in Gergiev's bleak approach.  In the opening fanfare, the "Fate" theme is  defined with uncompromising forcefulness. Bright "daydream" figures ("daydreams") but overwhelmed by strident brass,  the "Fate" theme re-asserting itself with full force. In the second movement, an adantino, Gergiev finds tenderness, but here, too, the mood is tinged with melancholy. It represents memories now firmly in the past.  The oboe sings alone, surrounded by shadowy strings which surge with heartfelt pathos. With its array of strange images, the scherzo represents a puzzle. The composer wrote to Madame von Meck, that when the imagination is released, it runs untrammeled.  Thus the sense of liberation in the finale, the brass augemented by percussion and clashing cymbals, before the main theme returns, now assertive and defiant.  Gergiev is at his uninhibited best.

The first movement of Tchaikovsky's Fifth is brooding, but gives way to a purposeful march,  which, introduced by clarinet and bassoon, opens out expansively, taking into its sweep various minor themes, before receding back into funereal hush.  Gergiev shapes the outburst before the conclusion with such power that the hush seemed poisoned, even baleful. The andante cantabile thus felt haunted, long, slow strings stretching, framing the horn solo, here beautifully done, at once wistful and serene. Clarinet and bassoon, and later strings, take up the melody, supporting before the "fate" fanfare wells up, underlined by timpani. Yet the melody, and the  horn, re-appear, and the orchestra surges once more before subsiding into silence.  Gergiev and the Mariinsky strike a good balance between glorious melody and the darkness around it. The brief Valse is an interlude, like the scherzo in the Fourth Symphony, whose apparent insouciance is cut short by the tense ostinato of the last chords. This serves to highlight the intensity of the finale, where the "fate" theme with its pounding, running figures lead the orchestra into grand surge, swelling and passionate.  Gergiev and his orchestra shape the brass chords firmly, electrifying their solemn portent.  In the triumphant march, these "fate" chords become integrated into the affirmative whole,  with a majestic fortissimo and fast paced presto.  No more funereal gloom : the final coda explodes with vigour. 

Gergiev Marathon : Russians and Mahler, Elbphilharmonie

Where does Valery Gergiev get his energy ?  Two livestreams back to back from the Elbphilharmonie, both programmes hefty. Mahler Symphony no 4 together with Das Lied von der Erde - a combination most conductors wouldn't dare essay on the same night, let alone after the previous night's all-Russian concert - Stravinsky, Rimsky-Korsakov and Shostakovich Symphony no 4.  The players of the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra must be exhausted.  Yet Gergiev looks calm and refreshed.

He has done Stravinsky's Funeral Song, (Chante funèbre) op 5, so often that it's almost his trademark. Please read my piece Lost No More about his premiere of the piece in St Petersburg in 2016 with the Mariinsky Orchestra. As he did then, he paired it with Rimsky-Korsakov's suite from The Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh and the Maiden Fevroniya.  This combination is important, given the connection between Rimsky-Korsakov and the young Stravinsky. Towards the end of Funeral Song, (Chante funèbre)  we might detect the last, long chords of The Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh.  While Stravinsky spoke fondly of the Funeral Song, it's a transitional work rather  than a stand alone major work, so it does need to be programmed as intelligently as Gergiev does.  The Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh is a much more sophisticated piece, its colours at once delicate and luscious. It's a Gergiev favourite, too, and  this performance was very good indeed.  This time, though, his main focus was Shostakovich Symphony no 4 in C minor op 43. Again, this is something Gergiev could conduct in his sleep if he wished but here he shaped it with the clarity it needs. Some conductors get away with clumsiness in Shostakovich because some audiences like noise and butchness.  But Gergiev delineated the more elusive passages, bringing out the finesse that lurks behind the surface brutalism.  If there is hidden meaning in this symphony, those wayward wind and horn passages might represent free spirits uncowed by the larger forces around them.

The real surprise, for me anyway, was the quality of Gergiev's Mahler on this occasion. To say he's hit or miss with Mahler is an understatement.  One of the most horrible Mahler 4's I've heard was Gergiev, but here he was good, alert to the vulnerability that is  so much part of this symphony, which sometimes makes it feeel threatening to some.  In the first movement, he captured the jaunty sleigh ride well, so it felt purposeful rather than random jollies.  Life is a sleigh ride, full of thrills, but eventually we all die, which is why it connects to the last movement.  Great restraint in the other movements too : the moment should not end too soon.  The soloist, Genia Kühmeier, stood behind the orchestra. The acoustic of the Elbphilharmonie seems to favour singers by spreading sound around them rather than blasting from behind. She was sensual rather than otherworldly but that's perfectly appropriate, given the joy the child takes in earthly pleasures.

Following Mahler 4 with Das Lied von der Erde takes guts, maybe foolhardy guts,  but Gergiev and the Müncheners pulled it off.  Skill there, plus stamina.  Some very good moments, especially the winds, with a decidedly "oriental" touch at times.  Andreas Schager sang the tenor part, Tanja Ariane Baumgartner the alto.  Schager's a very good Wagnerian, a born "stage animal" who inhabited the part psychologically, as good opera singers do.  If his voice sounded stressed at times, it didn't matter. The protagonist is supposed to be stressed, so terrified of death that he drinks himself into oblivion.  One of the best Das Lied von der Erde tenors ever was Peter Schreier whose edgy earnestness conveyed the full horror of his predicament.  Good balance between Schager and Baumgartner, her serenity an answer to his fears. 

Glazunov Raymonda : Petipa, Gergiev, Mariinsky

This year's Mariinsky Ballet Raymonda, with Viktoria Tereshkina, conducted by Valery Gergiev on arte.tv until February.  This is the full three act version of the ballet, choreographed by Marius Petipa in 1898, when he was eighty.  It was to be his last production, but it was the work throygh which Alexander Glazunov made his name. Though the version seen here is the 1948 re-creation by Konstantin Sergeyev, it's a glimpse into the world of late 19th century Russian ballet.  
Raymonda is a beauty courted by a Christian prince Jean de Brienne, but a Saracen, Abderakhman, enters the party.  Raymonda falls asleep and dreams of the Saracen.  Modern audiuences won't have a problem understanding the connectioin between dreams and the subconcious, or forbidden lust.  So Raymonda falls asleep and dreams she's been captured by the sexy stranger.  In the second act, Abderakhman declares his love and offers Raymonda wonderful treasures.  But this cannot be : Jean de Brienne kills the intruder, and Raymonda lives happily ever after in safe wedded bliss. Because this is a ballet, the story is told, not through narrative, but through a series of vignettes for dancers to do their thing, solo, in groups and in larger ensemble. Dance is "abstract" theatre !  Lots of opportunities for staged symbolism : scenes lit by moonlight,"arabic"set pieces, children, some dressed as blackamoors and  music to match, combining western lyricism (lovely solo violin doubling the prima donna).  "Dreaminess" is an illusioin. Though the dancers strike graceful poses, their feet are on the ground even when they perch en pointe or leap through the air.  Being a dancer means having muscles and physical stamina. Not for nothing many end up with injuries and retire young. Nothing romantic about that !  So the music allows for rest periods, for changes of pace and so on, and grand moments when the orchestra takes over, though the basic pulse remains firm and energetic.

Prokofiev's Cantata for the Twentieth Anniversary of the October Revolution - Gergiev Prom

Sergei Prokofiev's  Cantata for the Twentieth Anniversary of the October Revolution, Op 74,  with Valery Gergiev conducting the Mariinsky Orchestra and Chorus. One Day That Shook the World to borrow the subtitle from Sergei Eisenstein's epic film October : Ten Days that Shook the World.  Prokofiev's Cantata was dynamite in many ways. It's an explosion of sound so overwhelming that it needs to be detonated in a performance space as vast as the Royal Albert Hall for full effect. It was also dynamite  because it was modern in musical terms, while purporting to celebrate increasingly regressive Soviet values.  For a while, the Revolution espoused progressive ideas like futurism and modern art,  Eisenstein was probably able to get away with radical innovation ten years after 1917. Twenty years later, Prokofiev was not so lucky. His Cantata was suppressed until Prokofiev and his nemesis Josef Stalin had died, ironically within days of one another.  Now, a hundred years after the Revolution, we can perhaps assess its impact on Russia and the world.  And with Gergiev and the Mariinsky Orchestra and Choir, we probably had the best possible interpreters.  

Eisenstein's film, made ten years after the Russian Revolution of 1917, depicted ten critical days in the struggle, starting with the return of Lenin, culminating with the creation of a new Soviet government dedicated to ideals of peace and equality.  Prokofiev's Cantata unfolds in ten sections, highlighting themes in the revolution, some with explicit texts, others in more cryptic orchestral form. Prokofiev prefaced the Prelude with a quote from Marx and Engels A Communist Manifesto, "A Spectre is haunting Europe, the Spectre of Communism".  Marx and Engels, though, were writing in 1848 when communism was no more than theory.  Prokofiev, on the other hand, had personal experience of what a communist revolution could mean.  One wonders if he's praising the system or hinting at something darker.   

In the second section, the choirs intone "Philosophers have simply explained the world in different ways. The point is to change it". Another equivocal statement that can be read in different ways. Perhaps the setting hides a clue to meaning. Male and female chorus members sing lines that overlap one another,  propelled by strict rhythm like the pounding of machinery.   Rising anthems in the orchestra suggest patriotic pride, but they're cut apart by an Interlude with jagged angles, and ominous crashing percussion. Perhaps we're in some huge, infernal machine.  In the section titled "Marching in Closed Rank", the voices in jerky lockstep, the rhythms are even more pronounced, highlighted with crashing cymbals and brass.  The text quotes Lenin,"...we are singling ourselves out as a special group who have chosen the path of struggle, not the path of compromise". 

Yet Prokofiev follows this with a tiny Interlude of  haunting quietness before the voices return, the women apart from the men.  The revolution has started but its outcome is by no means certain.  Thus rushing, frantic figures, passages where the singing is so fast that, with less articulate voice, the line might collapse. Psychologically true: Trumpets call, metallic bells are beaten. We even hear the hint of ships' bells underlining the reference to "Kronstadt, Vyborg , Revel" (where the Navy mutinied).  We even hear the wail of a klaxon - a touch of Edgard Varèse? Though it's probably a natural response to the images of machinery and violence.  The suggestion of gunfire hangs heavily over the orchestra.

Victory, at last? The women's voices sing a serene hymn, whose sweeping lines mihght evoke traditional hymns of harvest.  The men's voices join in.  ""The machinery of oppression has been toppled". Yet still Prokofiev paints mechanical processes into his music - the regular tread of machines and processes, the singers clapping their hands in joyless rhythm, the percussion section stamping their feet.  A single voice rises from within the closed ranks of the men's choir.  "We need the measured tread of the iron battalions of the proletariat". The combined choirs sing a secular hymn of unquestioning obedience to Lenin and his values.  The words quote Stalin, whose loyalty to Lenin might not have been as pure as the text suggests.

A section marked "Symphony" follows - flying figures, trumpets and flutes leading forward, the suggestion of pipes and drums, then a semi-pastoral melody, the strings singing as if they were describing fields of corn and a bumper harvest.  But grim ostinato intrudes: the timpani growl and the orchestra flies off again in frantic tension.  Perhaps in this extended section, with its sophisticated textures and inventive contrasts, Prokofiev is expressing that which cannot be voiced in a totalitarian society.  The choirs return, singing in unison, men alternating with women, singing a chorale to words by Stalin, praising the Constitution of the Soviet Union. But in a totalitarian state, constitutional procedures don't guarantee a thing. You could end up in a gulag, as Lina Prokofiev discovered.

So is Prokofiev's  Cantata for the Twentieth Anniversary of the October Revolution glorious propaganda? And, if so, for whom and for what purpose? In musical terms it's a lot more sophisticated and subtle than the blatantly crude texts suggest.  Was Prokofiev playing a dangerous double game? We may never know, but the Cantata is a lot more than kitsch  

Prokofiev's Cantata received its first public performance in 1966.  The following year, the Soviet Republic marked its 50th anniversary with a reissue of Eisenstein's October: Ten Days that Shook The World. A new soundtrack was added, specially written by Dimitri Shostakovich. It';s thrilling stuff,. These thoughts absorbed me while listening to  Gergiev and the Mariinsky Orchestra perform Dimitri Shostakovich Symphony no 5 in D minor, written at the same time as Prokofiev's Cantata  This was a wildfire hit with the regime, rehabilitating him in their good books.  Throughout his career, Shostakovich played cat and mouse with the system, not always in the best interests of his music.   This performance was so good that Gergiev rehabilitated it for me: it's not usually my favourite., but this was good.  Gergiev's  also a champion of the music of Galina Ustvolskaya.  Initially, she was in Shostakovich's inner circle but eventually their paths turned apart.  Ustvolskaya's music was so uncompromising that it compromised her status in society.  Who knows what Prokofiev would have made of her?  The Prokofiev that might lurk within this Cantata, that is. Keeping Prokofiev and Shostakovich apart,  Tchaikovsky's  Piano Concerto No. 3 in E flat major with soloist Denis Matsuev.

Lost no more : Stravinsky Rimsky-Korsakov Gergiev Mariinsky

Igor Stravinsky's lost Funeral Song, (Chante funèbre) op 5 conducted by Valery Gergiev at the Mariinsky in St Petersburg  This extraordinary performance was infinitely more than an ordinary concert, even for a world premiere of an unknown work. It was a sanctification of the city of St Petersburg itself and its role in shaping modern music.  Hence the speeches on the broadcast, and the sincere emotion shown on the faces of the musicians of the Mariinsky Orchestra as they listened. A male wind player's lower lip wobbled.  A harpist leaned her head on her instrument, to hide genuine tears. We don't often see hard-boiled professionals like that, but the sense of occasion must have been overwhelming.

Stravinsky's Funeral Song was written when Stravinsky heard the news of the death of Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov in June 1908. Rimsky-Korsakov was Stravinsky's teacher, mentor and close friend: the sorrow Stravinsky must have felt was channelled into the piece, completed in a very short period, and premiered in January 1909. Akthough Stravinsky remebered it fondly, the manuscript was thought lost, until, by chance, renovations to the Mariiinsky's old building in 2014 revealed a cache of uncatalogued papers which included 83 orchestral parts used in the first (and only) performance.  Read Stephen Walsh's account here and listen to Natalya Braginskaya before the broadcast). The parts had lain, unnoticed through the Revolution, after which the city was renamed Leningrad, and subject to one of the most brutal sieges in modern history. Stravinsky's Funeral Song survived the Tsars, the Nazis and the collapse of Communism: Stravinsky's modernism wasn't popular with Stalin. By honouring Stravinsky and Rimsky-Korsakov together in this way, Gergiev, the Mariinsky and the city of St Petersburg are making a powerful statement

Stravinsky's Funeral Song (Chante funèbre) begins with ominous dark chords. It's a slow march, the gloom lit with rustling strings and figures that seem to leap sharply upwards in protest against the gloom.  A solo French horn outlines a melody. The full orchestra joins in, and the music rises almost to crescendo before falling back. Prostrate, but not defeated. The strings surge and a group of horns take up momentum.  A hushed, mysterious near silence, bassoons, double basses, and full flow is restored.  The timpani rumble, and strange lingering chords repeat. Intense anguish, then a very short return to peace, of a kind, with the harps and low winds murmuring.

Though Stravinsky's Funeral Song is short, it's very rich.  Stravinsky's clearly thinking of Rimsky-Korsakov's great orchestral dramas. Thoughtfully, Gergiev preceded it with the Suite from Rimsky-Korsakov's The Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh and the Maiden Fevroniya , which premiered in the Mariinsky in February 1907, with the same conductor who did the Funeral Song two years later . The Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh and the Maiden Fevroniya is an astonishing piece, illuminated with intense colours and vivid imagery.  It describes an idealized city in Old Russia, which, when attacked by the Tatars, is saved by a mystery fog which makes it invisible, though its bells, prancing horses and pipes can be heard,  tantalizingly, in the distance above the lakes and forests.  Do we hear Kitezh in the last, lingering chords of the Funeral Song? The piece is something of a Gergiev trademark, for he's championed it passionately for years. It was a sensational hit when he conducted it in London in 1994. You need the full work for maximum impact, but in this concert, the Suite worked fine, and the performance was intensely moving.

Think on the swirling, lustrous motifs that depict the magic fog that conceals the Invisible City.  then think of Stravinsky's The Firebird, which premiered in Paris in June 1910.  In The Firebird, Stravinsky quotes Rimsky-Korsakov's Kashchey the Immortal (1902) which premiered in St Petersburg in 1905.  Indeed The Firebird incorporates two separate legends into one ballet with great effect.  In Rimsky-Korsakov's Kashchey an ugly monster has a daughter who holds the secret to his death. She’s just as cold as he is but she falls in love. Kashchey’s music is shrilly angular, evoking his harsh personality as well as the traditional way he’s portrayed, as a skeleton, the symbol of death who cannot actually die. The Storm Knight, on whom the plot pivots, is defined by the wild ostinato. The most inventive music, though, surrounds Kashchey's daughter Kashcheyvna. When she sings, there are echoes of Kundry. Harps and woodwinds seem to caress her voice, so when her iciness melts, we sympathize.

Stravinsky's Firebird inhabits an altogether different plane. While Rimsky-Korsakov’s music embellishes the vocal line, Stravinsky’s floats free. It “is” the drama. Music for dance has to respect certain restraints, so it’s necessarily quite episodic, but Stravinsky integrates the 21 segments so seamlessly that the piece has lived on, immortal. The Firebird is a magical figure which materializes out of the air, leading the Prince to Kashchey’s secret garden. Unlike the ogre, the Prince is kind and sets the bird free. He’s rewarded with a magic feather. This time the Princess and other captives are liberated by altruistic love. It’s purer and more esoteric, and Stravinsky’s music is altogether more abstract, imaginative and inventive. Yet again, the "characters" are defined by music.  The solo part for horn, for example, plays a role in the music like that of a solo dancer. Textures around it need to be clean as they were here, so its beauty is revealed with poignant dignity. 

Although Gergiev has conducted The Firebird so often  he could almost do it on autopilot, on this occasion his focus was so intense that the performance was extraordinary. When Gergiev is this good, he's better than anyone else.  Absolute finesse, the Mariinsky playing barely above the point of audibility, but with magical lustre, then exploding into the wild, demonic passages with the energy and precision of a corps de ballet. Mournful bassoons, exotic clarinets, celli and basses plucked  pizzicato like a choir singing vocalise.  Once again, we're in a magical dimension like the fog that lifted Kitezh beyond mortal ken.  The "Firebird" theme returned, richer and deeper than before, but how does the piece end ?  With strong, emphatic chords repeated again and again. Like in  the Funeral Song, like The Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh.  Presenting the three pieces together almost seamlessly, Gergiev revealed their connections, and the inner artistic logic that linked the two composers together.   An outstanding experience. Enjoy and marvel : the concert is available on demand for approx 88 days on medici tv.   Please see my numerous other pieces on Stravinsky by following  the link "Stravinsky" below and on the right.

No and Not ! The Nose ! Shostakovich

Shostakovich The Nose at the Royal Opera House tonight, conducted by Ingo Metzmacher, who is the reason why I want to go.  Please read my review HERE.  Metzmacher once did a series called "Who's afraid of modern music?" confronting the notion that modern music is somehow "difficult".  No ! and not The Nose ! A man wakes up to find his nose has disappeared. He's the kind of guy for whom appearance means status, but the nose has different ideas.  It takes on its own life, running around town as a civic official. But even that’s not clear – sometimes it’s a body in a stretchy white shroud, sometimes it’s a piece of droopy rubber, and sometimes it’s not visible at all, and only spoken about.The Nose is funny, but it's also farce. The libretto's based on Gogol.  Laughs, yes, but no smiles. Sharp teeth and eyes constantly alert for danger.  Metzmacher will give the music bite.

Valery Gergiev brought The Nose to London with the Mariinsky Theatre more than ten years ago, in a season of Shostakovich operas and ballets.  Those were early days when the Mariinsky was still refered to by its old Soviet name the Kirov, and not funded and supported as well as it is now.   The Mariinsky also did The Golden Years,which was heard no less than four times in different forms that same year. José Serebrier's recording was electrifying, the Mariinsky's live performance marred by poor staging.  At that same time London also saw productions of The Bright Stream and The Bolt, another of my favourites.  With at least three major productions of Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk in recent years, and the bizarre, unfinished Orango, which Salonen brought to maniac life  (read more HERE),  we haven't done badly. Besides, there's been so much 20th century Russian music and theatre in London  (The Gambler, A Dog's Heart, etc) that The Nose at the Royal Opera House should be a cinch.  I'm definitely not an admirer of Barrie Kosky, but hope that this new Nose will be up to scratch.

And back to memories of the Mariinsky Nose, the best of the crop that golden year 2006.  The Mariinsky Nose didn't rub away the very important political aspects of the piece, so even though the punch of the Russian text was lost on English speakers, the imagery was clear.  It cocked a snoot at bureaucracy and conformity.  When Kovalov tried to put an advertisement in the newspaper “lost and found” it’s refused on circuitous grounds.  Vignettes flew at a hectic pace: the bagel seller who gets raped, the twins, the old dowager announcing her own death to a bunch of twitching, neurotic spinsters : a panorama of crazy life . Nothing’s explained: logic means little in this fertile procession of observations. At the end a Prince on a stuffed camel proclaimed everything’s sorted, but by then we were in the heart of mayhem, complete with banners of newsprint proclaiming HOC and COH, which were wordplays on the Cyrillic for “nose”.

Like the Royal Opera House, the Mariinsky is also a ballet house.   Thus the Mariinsky Nose blew the dance sub themes up well. For example, numerous cab drivers whirl about in frantic circles, each with a fascinating passenger within, yet the maelstrom is executed with such precision that it suggested the clockwork order of a society controlled by expectations. When the cab drivers lifted people above their shoulders – the dancers at the fringe of the group didn't touch, but moved in tune with other bodies as if they were all one single organism. The nose was played by a superbly athletic dancer who could do backflips and twist round the singer who sang Kovalov. Effectively, a pas de deux, but the dancer obviously the master.  The point, exactly !

It was striking, too, how much the Mariinsky Nose owed to the Russian circus tradition. Of course there were clowns, but the real influence is deeper. Circus works because there’s so much happening, so fast, that the illusion is even more spectacular than what’s actually happening. Hence the highly coloured costumes, and the almost acrobatic physicality of the performers’ movements on stage. Even the massive metal tunnel (vaguely resembling a nose) created a vast new dimension to the set, further blurring the boundaries of linear perspective. At one point an angel vocalised wordlessly from the rafters, while a sinister dark angel flitted out from behind her. Circus extends the limits of what the human body can do – just as the errant nose amply demonstrates. Circus and opera both have the same goal: the creation of illusion.

Watch this space.  Friday I'll write up the new Shostakovich Nose. 

Gergiev Ustvolskaya Shostakovich Berlin Musikfest

At the Musikfest Berlin, Valery Gergiev conducted the Münchner Philharmoniker in Galina Ustvolskaya's Symphony no 3 "Jesus Messaih, save us!" with Shostakovich Symphony no 4. A musically astute programme, much wiser that the odd ragbag Gergiev and the Müncheners had to do at thr Proms in July where Ustvolskaya's remarkable piece was buried in crowd-pleasing Strauss and Rachmaninoff.   Ustvolskaya's piece is powerful but forbidding and really  needs to be heard in proper context, not submerged in the ragbag mix the Proms inflicted on Gergiev. In Berlin, he could give Ustvolskya the prominence her music deserves, and present it in proper context. Ustvolskaya (1919-2006) was an outsider, her career so restrained that, in comparison, Shostakovich was almost a matinee idol. But as this symphony shows, isolation intensified her originality.  The power of this work lies in its emotional honesty,  built on the foundations of unshakeable faith.  

Ustvolskaya's Symphony no 3 Jesus Messiah, save us!  is based on the life of an 11th-century monk, Hermann of Reichenau, aka "Hermann the cripple" who was born with so many birth defects that he lived in constant pain and had difficulty speaking. Nonetheless, he became a theologian, an astronomer, a mathematician and wrote a treatise on the science of music. He lived to age 44, ancient by the standards of the time and was canonized in 1863. A paralyzed musician without a voice? What a metaphor for a composer in the Soviet era!  

Not for nothing, Ustvolskaya's Symphony no 3 evolves from a single, unaccompanied voice.  Alexei Petrenko (pictured with Gergiev at the Proms performance) intones the text with uncompromising gravity, as if his voice has materialized from an ancient past.  Thus the austerity of the orchestration, and the utterly uncompromising nature of the work, closer to Orthodox traditions than to medieval Europe.  The instruments operate in tight units: five basses, five trumpets, five oboes, three tubas, three percussion desks, with large timpani and smaller, militaristic drums.  Thus a sense of ritual, a sense of unshakeable austerity, pitting the solo voice against small but strong forces. The piano mediates, sometimes supporting the idea of a wayward individual, yet also employed as percussion, with  long drawn sequences of ostinato, a lone trombone wailing balefully long lines against the piano's firm "footsteps".  "Save us, save us" Petrenko whispers, (in Russian) his eyes raised upwards, as if listening for a sign, as the music quickly dissipates into silence. 

Whether or not Shostakovich compromised with the Stalinist regime, he managed to balance on the edge. Ustvolskaya wasn't sent to Siberia, but seems to have struggled on in a kind of external exile. Shostakoviuch dominates to such an extent that it masks the originality of Ustvolskaya's idiom. She and Shostakovich didn't get on for various reasons. In any case, the integrity in her music comes from very deep sources. Thus she's closer to Stravinsky and the "primitivism" of the Rite of Spring,  and to the brief explosion of modernity which flourished in the early years after the Revolution, and produced works like Alexander Mosolov's The Iron Foundry (1925-6)   Ustvolskaya's music even connects  to the fierce awkwardness of Janáček's Glagolitic Mass, and indeed to Messiaen's ground-breaking masterpieces like Et exspecto resurrectionem mortuorum. Boulez was a great interpreter of Stravinsky, Janáček and Messiaen, so his disdain for Shostakovich needs to be appreciated in context.  Maybe one day, when modern music is better understood, we can see things from a wider perspective.  Follow this link HERE to a discussion of  Ustvolskaya, her place in Soviet music and her relation to Shostakovich.  Also, this excellent documentary, made when Ustvolskya was, at last, being valued for her own sake. She was nearly 90 when the film was made but her mind is sharp. She knows who Reinbert de Leeuw is and what he stands for. 

With Gergiev's championship of Ustvolskaya, perhaps now her time has come.  She was famously sniffy about some Soviet-era performances of her work, and with good reason, from what I've heard,  but Gergiev is sophisticated enough to get it.  Even though Gergiev turned up nearly 20 minutes late, not at all long by his track record, as soon as he reached the stage he snapped into form.  Extremely tightly focussed, a performance informed by the same kind of mental and emotional discipline Ustvolskaya insisted upon. This Berlin performance was so much stronger that the London performance seemed sloppy in comparison. Catch it on The Digital Concert Hall when it's rebroadcast in a few days.  Gergiev is unpredictable. When he's bad, he's very bad but when he's good, he's very good. The skill of a listener is to recognize which is which.  

Gergiev has been conducting Shostakovich forever, hardly surprising, since the composer, who once had to compromise with the Soviets, is now thoroughly mainstream.  So this Shostakovich Symphony no 4 was rewarding, since Gergiev knows it like the back of his hand.  The interest, this time round, was his relationship with the Münchner Philharmoniker,  whose Chief Conductor he's become. The Munich Philharmonc is quite different from the London Symphony Orchestra, which Gergiev headed for ten years.  So far, so good.  I like the sound. Though Gergiev will conduct regularly in Munich, he'll still be based in London, where airline connections are better than in Munich, so he can commute between his various bases in oligarch enclaves all over the world.  
 

Gergiev smiles Prom 4 Ravel Ustvolskaya

Valery Gergiev in a happy, sunny mood at BBC Prom 4.  Gergiev always springs surprises but this was a surprise beyond expectation. When Gergiev is good, he's very good but when he's bad, he's very, very bad.  This "new" Gergiev should come out more often.


The programme was fairly standard - Ravel, Rachmaninov, Strauss and Ustvolskaya, but Gergiev animated it by emphasizing each composer's individuality.  Fidelity to idiom does matter!  Gergiev is musician enough to know that the score does count, however his  more extremist fans might think.  Thus the discipline with which he conducted Ravel Boléro, observing the progressions as they unfold.  New elements enter as the music builds up until it reaches its climax. Each element adds new flavours, but fundamentally the traverse is defined by the steady beat of the drum, reflected in the strumming pizzicato. In flamenco, rigid rhythmic discipline is part of the style,  creating a ritualized tension that makes the brief flourishes seem even more like explosive release.  As the piece progresses, the energy builds up as a natural result of what's gone before. Just as dancers and athletes train hard to build muscle, Gergiev shows how disciplined conducting serves music much better than fake, flashy "excitement".

Rachmaninov Piano Concerto no 3 has a reputation for flamboyant display, but its wonders lie in the piano part. Gergiev wisely gave Behzod Abduraimov pride of place. Abduraimov isn't the most spectacular of players, so the restraint Gergiev brought to the orchestra was sensitive, supporting the soloist.

Galina Ustvolskaya's Symphony no 3 Jesus Messiah, save us!  is based on the life of an 11th-century monk, Hermann of Reichenau, aka "Hermann the cripple" who was born with so many birth defects that he lived in constant pain and had speech defects. Nonetheless, he became a theologian, an astronomer, a mathematician and wrote a treatise on the science of music. He lived to age 44, ancient by the standards of the time and was canonized in 1863.  A paralysed musician without a voice? What a metaphor for a composer in the Soviet era ! 

Ustvolskaya's music is certainly very different from conventional Soviet music, but it does have deeper antecedents and connections.  Pounding blocks of form, percussion-led  rough-hewn sounds and spoken narrative that speaks fire and brimstone (speaker Alexei Petrenko)   Its "primitivism" is deliberate for it evokes the idea of  strength in times of hardship. Petrenko recites so forcefully that it hardly matters whether you speak Russian or not: you can imagine the monk/saint defying the odds stacked against him, firm in his faith in God. 

Ustvolskaya didn't fit in with Soviet convention but her music does have antecedents. She may or may not have known Janáček's Glagolitic Mass but she would have known Stravinsky's Rite of Spring which evokes even older beliefs. She would also have known of Orthodox Church music and the Russian hermit tradition. The "primitivism" in this symphony also connects to Futurism, which flourished in the early years after the Revolution, and produced works like Alexander Mosolov's The Iron Foundry (1925-6) and also influenced film makers like Sergei Eisenstein.  By 1983, when this symphony was written, Ustvolskaya would also have been aware of music in the west,, particularly Messiaen, who also had a thing for huge blocks of rock-solid sound and ecstatic visions of the glory of God.  Ustvolskaya's Third Symnphony is highly individual, and shows that Shostakovich was by no means the only modernist in town

Gergiev still lives in one of the several oligarch enclaves in London, from which he can jetset with ease. Munich is a smaller city,  so chances are he'll spend even less time with the Munich Philharmonic than he did with the LSO, but if he has good rehearsal conductors and musicians he can add the finishing touches.  Like the LSO,the Munich Philharmonic is one of several top notch orchestras working in close proximity and stimulating each other.  In recent years it's been somewhat outshone, but if this prom with Gergiev is anything to go by, good things lie ahead.  And judging from their performance of this Suite from Richard Strauss Der Rosenkavalier, they are teaching Gergiev to be lyrical.

Bread and circuses - Boris Godunov, ROH

Modest Mussorgsky Boris Godunov at the Royal Opera House, London with Bryn Terfel, in the original 1869 version rather than the tarted-up 1872 version revised by Rimsky-Korsakov.The second version is popular because it adds pretty girls,  kids, battlefields  which is fine. Opera "is" circus, meant for thrills and spills. But opera is also theatre, where drama is part of meaning.   Mussorgsky's original is dark and claustrophobic, like Boris's mind, closing in on itself, grappling with self doubt. The revision has show tunes, ballet interludes  and other distractions to draw attention away from Boris's predicament, and away from the very tension that makes the drama so disturbing.

Barely a year ago, Valery Gergiev brought Boris Godunov to London with the Mariinsky Opera, who might, one assumes, know what they're doing with Russian opera. They did the original version, adding the Innkeeper's song which adds fun to the proceedings without changing the fundamental impact of the original.  Vladimir Putin rules with an iron fist, like Tsars of old, but he, like Boris, has to watch his back. No-one comes to that kind of power by being cute and cuddly.  Gergiev and the Mariinsky are where they are because Putin supports them. Go figure, then, when they do Boris Godunov.  It wasn't a surprise at all that Gergiev turned up late for the Barbican performance (and even later for the next evening's concert).   Whatever held him up must have worked, for Gergiev's conducting was astonishingly uninhibited, fuelled with courage and disdain for time-serving trivia. Though there were technical blips in Gergiev's conducting, the orchestra and the singers know the opera - and their charismatic boss - so well that they, too, became inspired  by Gergiev's devil-may-care verve.  Circus audiences wouldn't understand.

Eight years ago  the ENO did Boris Godunov in the original version at the Coliseum. Edward Gardner conducted. Much as I love him, he couldn't match Gergiev's almost demented bloody-mindedness.  The production was by Tim Albery. The set was grey and barren, like the shelves of a Stalin era supermarket, perhaps, where the populace were grateful for any scrap they could scrounge.  That’s why the Tsars and the Church were able to overwhelm the peasants. Their authority was built on being able to dazzle the serfs into submission.  No wonder the peasants are terrified that somehow the world will collapse if they aren’t dominated by a Leader.  Of course their piety is enforced by  brutality, but the confluence of credulity and servitude tells us something about totalitarian regimes. If people want to believe, they’ll believe anything.  This is why False Dimitris figure so much in Russian history. The dead Tsarevich can't actually wield power but symbolically  becomes a saint and thus connecting to the power of the Church. Like the Church, this  isn’t rational, but it scares the wits out of Boris.I don't usually like Tim Albery's work, but his Boris Godunov was effective because it concentrated colour with power.  Give the public "bread and circuses" to keep them cowed.

Ideally, good opera would balance substance and showmanship, but fundamentally circuses without bread aren't nourishing. (bread can be fun if it's good)   Consider the "Nabucco syndrome" with its austere set reflecting the invisible One True God. It's just as well that some of the London audience weren't Hebrew slaves. They'd have apostated quicksmart to graven images and golden calves   Full review HERE in Opera Today.

Gergiev speaks - candid interview

"Sometimes people think they are holding a magic wand"says Valery Gergiev in a remarkably candid interview. Note the source - Tass, the organ of the former Soviet State.   Read the article here. 

Questioned about his demanding schedule, Gergiev explains "it's a conductor's job". At the level at which Gergiev works, orchestras have numerous conductors. It's a maestro's job to polish things. Working with different orchestras keeps a conductor on his toes, and nourishes an interplay between different orchestras. It's naive to assume that conductors have to stay in the same place all the time.  Many creative people thrive on challenge.Indeed, such challenges come with the job description for most good conductors. Gergiev can be maddening, and sometimes come close to the wire, but that's what makes him interesting. 

Much more intriguing are Gergiev's thoughts on the relationship between the Mariinsky and the Bolshoi. If anyone has a tab on Putin's mind and the artistic scene in Russia, it's Gergiev, Heed his words.
 

Gergiev Mariinsky Boris Godunov Barbican

Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov (original version) with Valery Gergiev and the Mariinsky Opera, starting their residency at the Barbican, London. Gergiev loves the Mariinsky, which has scaled great heights under his direction. Boris Godunov is key Mariinsky repertoire, and brings out the absolute best in Gergiev. Total, passionate  committment from all involved, a reminder that artistic values are paramount. Whatever else one might think of Putin, the Mariinsky is a gem worthy of a Tsar.

From the first cries of the bassoon, it was clear that this performance was going to be a powerful experience. The Mariinsky Orchestra can create the rich, burnished sounds we associate with Russian opera: intoxicating dark strings,  resonantly deep brass and winds that sing as if they embodied the ghosts of past masters like Chaliapin. I felt as though we weren't just hearing the players in the here and now, but the spirit of centuries of tradition, remade and created with modern clarity. This is a superlative orchestra, playing with precise economy, aware of the violence behind the surface beauty in the score. The off-stage bells sounded hollow, and cacophonic, a sensitive and thoughtful touch. Gerrgiev's driving tempi created dramatic thrust, like Fate itself. Powerful tutti, suggesting vast hordes, controlled in strict discipline.Yet, most telling were the moments of transient beauty. Gergiev's fingers fluttered with delicacy, moderating volume, allowing flashes of a more luminous, elusive brightness - allusions to peasant music, the rhythms of simple lives, in the fields and in monasteries, the very "soul"of Russia. .

Boris Godunov fascinates because he's a divided character with contradictions and spiritual angst: a thoroughly contemporary personality. His conflicts are relevant to all power-brokers today. Peasants and boyars put so much faith in strong leaders that they get what they want. Some things don't change. Maybe the world isn't ready for leaders who do a different kind of strong. It's to Godunov's credit that he cares about the soul of Russia, and about the Orthodox values that shaped it. Many leaders - all over the world - don't have consciences like that.

Exceptional singing and playing,  a balm after the shamefully inept Tannhäuser at the Vienna State Opera on Sunday - no wonder Welser-Möst quit!  Silly costumes would have been a distraction in  a performance as good as this. For the Mariinsky, Gergiev gets the very best. Even before they started singing, the male  singers lined up in front of the orchestra conveyed a remarkable image. Mikhail Kazakov sang Boris. He created the part with such vigour and dignity, suggesting a Tsar who genuinely would be a father to his people but has to play the power games of state to survive.  Hence the warmth in Kazakov's voice, and the ferocity with which he responds to Gudonov's dilemma. Kazakov's last big aria will haunt me for a long time., for he sang with exceptional vivid colour and feeling. But I will also remember the way he interacted with the Holy Fool, brilliantly created by Andrey Popov. Popov wails, his voice twitching as if the character had a physical impediment. He whines, he's bullied by children and he's powerless, but he knows that the Virgin Mary won't like it if he sins. Kazakov is such a good actor that he commands the stage even when he's not singing.  As Kazakov listens, you hear, inaudibly, that the tsar is shaken.

Mikhail Petrenko, singing Pimen, didn't need to look old and monastic, for his voice carried authority. The effortless elegance in his voice suggested that his God armed him with eternal purity, against which intrigue has no domain., Prince Suisky is a fixer, but Pimen triumphs because he can penetrate past the corridors of power. Evgeny Akimov sang Shuisky, negotiating the tricky twists in the vocal part with aplomb. Sergei Semishkur sang The Pretender with such vocal presence that he stood out clearly from the others in the Inn scne.  His pursuers should have spotted him  right away because he sang so well.  No weak points in this performance at all, even the voices in the crowd, who, suitably, remained in the crowd. The choruses shone as gloriously as the soloists, the female voices particularly lustrous. 

Gergiev Janáček Glagolitic Mass Prom LSO

At  Prom 9 Valery Gergiev conducted the London Symphony Orchestra. The LSO are an excellent orchestra, whose musicians have worked together, and with Gergiev, for many years. Earlier in the week, Gergiev conducted the World Orchestra For Peace, made up of musicians from 75 different ensembles who meet roughly once a year. WOP publicity made much of the fact that many of them were principals in their own orchestras. But there is no way in the world  that 75 orchestra are going to be of the same quality, or have the same standards, even with a few really good musicians among them for strengthening, like the LSO leader.  With the WOP, Gergiev's job was to hold the unwieldy unit together, hoping at least for cohesion.  With the LSO, he can be an artist, with musicians he knows can be challenged to great things. What a difference a good orchestra makes!

If an orchestra is about musicianship, the LSO delivered, superbly. Barry Douglas was the soloist in Brahms Piano Concerto No 1 in D minor. Douglas played with verve, confident that the orchestra would support him. It must have been as much of a joy for Gergiev to conduct this as it was to listen to.

Janáček's Glagolitic Mass was, however, the main draw. The Royal Albert Hall is made for monumental works like this, allowing the performers to throw themselves into its spirit with all the force they can muster. In Czech tradition, thousands would gather at religious festivals to worship by singing together, with the fervour of communal affirmation. No ifs, buts or maybes in such circumstances. "Gospodi pomiluj gospodi pomiluj" the chorus repeat, whipped into delirious frenzy,. It doesn't matter what you believe as long as you believe with intensity. Perhaps that's why Janáček used an ancient Slavonic language no-one actually speaks and used it in a way that would drive scholars crazy. It's the ferocity of belief that matters. Janáček, an atheist who knew all about playing in churches, aimed for something quite specifically non-churchy. His passion for nature and the outdoors inspires the piece. "My cathedral ", he said, was “the enormous grandeur of mountains beyond which stretched the open sky…...the scent of moist forests my incense”.

Wisely, Gergiev chose Paul Wingfield's reconstruction of the original version of the piece, which captures its audacious wildness in all its rough-hewn glory. This isn't nearly as well-known as the more conventional later version. It's shockingly modern, while also accessing the traditions of the Primitive Church. Pierre Boulez conducted it at the Proms in 2008 with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, an  experience etched forever in my memory. The piece is almost as if Janáček's cathedral were being built in sound. Those powerful, pounding brasses, the upward, thrusting rhythms, cascading rivulets of sound sparkling like light through the giant trees in the forest, the chorus intoxicated by faith.

Janáček's Glagolitic Mass suits Gergiev's temperament, too. Boulez articulated the waving, angular cross-rhythms, showing the strength in Janáček's structure, from which firm base the excitement in the singing can emerge. Gergiev goes for a blunter approach, details more muted, but equally strong.. Possibly this way the piece connects more to pan-Slavic tradition and the Russian composers whom Janáček, would have been familiar with. Janáček was so fervently pro-Russian that he placed his beliefs above the welfare of his daughter. The photo shows the saints of the Slavonic Church revealing the gospels.

This interpretation suits the more lyrical passages in the music. The choruses and female soloists (Mlada Khudoley and Yulia Matochkina) produced beautiful sounds, like the "scent of the forest" the composer was referring to. Mikhail Vekua, the tenor, negotiated the extremes of the part nicely. Yuri Vorobiev sang the bass part.  Given the volume of sound around them, the soloists came over clearly. Strain isn't by any means inappropriate in this music given its quasi-savagery. Gergiev, though, adopts a sheen more in keeping with the neo-primitivism of Stravinsky, and the spirit of  much of Janáček's  other music. How I'd like to hear Gergiev conduct The Cunning Little Vixen!  It's a perfectly valid approach,  gentler on the voices, particularly the choruses, though the organ sounded oddly incongruous in context.  Thomas Trotter showed just how powerful the organ part can be, separate from the orchestra.  His Varhany sólo was extraordinarily explosive, yet dignified and controlled. Perhaps the organ is the voice of God, bursting through ? Or the voice of Janáček, the former church organist, who knew the spiritual power of abstract music.

Claire Seymour's review is HERE IN OPERA TODAY

Gergiev World Orchestra for Peace Prom 4

In the aftermath of  MH 17, it's hard to think of any ally of Vladimir Putin as an ambassador for world peace.  On the other hand, because I genuinely believe in freedom of speech, I can't condemn him for having opinions on subjects he's bound to know more about than I do. Plus, the Gergiev/Putin connection means support for the arts in Russia.

In any case, the grandiose title "World Orchestra for Peace" wasn't Gergiev's idea.  The orchestra was created by Georg Solti. The concept was idealistic and attracted much celebrity support. Musically, however, the orchestra has performed only some 20 times since 1995, four of which were at the BBC Proms.  It's good that musicians can get together from all parts of the world but that doesn't mean musical consistency,especially with players from 75 different ensembles whose styles don't necessarily mesh.  The Lucerne Festival Orchetsra (founded 2003)  is a summertime special too, but altogether in a different league in musical terms because all the players are on the same level of expertise, and work together regularly. The West-Eastern Divan Orchestra (founded 1999) probably does more for world peace than any other orchestra because it focuses on a specific conflict zone, and gives young musicians opportunities they would never otrherwise encounter.

Gergiev can be maddening as a conductor but he's almost never boring.  When he conducts repertoire that resonates with his soul, he can reach heights of brilliance. When he's forced to conduct material he doesn't like so much, he can be infuriating. His Mahler, in particular, is notorious for being Gergiev, not Mahler. So when he conducted Mahler Symphony no 6 at Prom 4, he achieved the feat of making the piece lifeless. It wasn't nearly as dull as his 2010 Prom with this same orchestra (also Mahler) but the sense of dutiful earnestness hung heavy. How I yearned for Gergiev when he's inspired, even when he's demonic, with an orchestra prepared to take risks and let rip.

Earnestness and duty hung heavily on Roxanna Panufnik's Three Paths to Peace. The short work (12 minutes) attempts to plait together the sounds of Islam, Christianity and Judaism;  the result was worthy, but vague. How does peace come about? When people's hearts and minds are focussed on pragmatic ways of ending specific problems. Think about what's happening in Gaza. Pretty music isn''t going to make a shred of difference. I quite liked Gergiev's way with Strauss's Symphonic Fantasia on Die Frau ohne Schatten , but like so much else on this evening, it wasn't quite the real thing.

A closer look at the Barbican 2014-2015 season (1) LSO

The Barbican's 2014-2015 season's just been announced. It's not wildly glamorous, but, on closer examination, it's a more solid season than expected. Last year the South Bank chose commercial pull over music, handing the place over to marketing The Rest is Noise. The South Bank once was a hothouse of artistic vision,  pioneering ventures like the Messiaen year, the Bartók series, the Nono series and so on.  There are, or were, people at the South Bank with knowledge and integrity. "Own curated" series keep music in the hands of musicians.  In the long term if you want to run an arts centre, you need to build on the unique resources you already have. Have we become so obsessed with anniversaries that we've forgotten  core repertoire?  Gimmicks come and go. Back to basics isn't such a bad thing.

The Barbican Centre is home to several good orchestras such as the BBCSO, the LSO, and The Academy of Ancient Music. There will always be a market for good music, done well, even if it's not trendy. The LSO, for example, is building upon Valery Gergiev's strengths by doing a lot of Russian music What's more Gergiev is bringing the Mariinsky Opera to London, with "two contrasting operas dealing with archetypical aspects of Russian identity",  Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov and Rodion Schedrin's The Left Hander (3rd and 4th November). How Vladimir Jurowski (a superb programme planner) would love to be able to do that. The Mariinsky Opera Chorus and the LSO Chorus are giving concerts too, Russian sacred music and Rachmaninov Vespers.  The LSO is also doing a violin series with soloists like Kavakos, Znaider, Ehnes, Tetzlaff, Bell and others. Bernard Haitink returns to conduct Bruckner and a Mozart/Beethoven programme with Mitsuko Uchida. In June he does two more concerts: Mahler, Beethoven, Mozart. No harm in that! More unusually he's conducting Mark-Anthony Turnage Frieze with Beethoven 9. 

In January, Simon Rattle conducts the LSO in two major concerts: Schumann Das Paradis und die Peri with a superlative cast. This is an importamt piece in the evolution of German music theatre. It's oratorio with operatic ambitions. Had Schumann lived would he have developed a different route to Wagner? Rattle and John Eliot Gardner, each in their own ways, have done much to bring this piece to attention. This will be one of the highlights of the year, and will be augmented by an LSO Discovery Day exploring the piece.

Rattle will also be bringing the Berliner Philhamoniker to London in February 2015 with  a complete Sibelius cycle.  This is majorly important because Sibelius is a composer whose work benefits from being heard in sequence. Rattle is one of the best exponents and the Berliner Philharmoniker are so good that they're always worth hearing.. Book now - this will be a blockbuster.

See also The BBCSO season and concerts around that, even bigger and more interesting.

AND a summary of the Blockbuster Barbican Baroque season.

Gergiev explodes - Le Sacre du printemps full video

Tonight at the BBC Proms,  François-Xavier Roth conducts Stravinsky Le scare du Printemps (the Rite of Spring). It's going to be different! Roth's leading Les Siècles, the innovative period instrument ensemble. The logic is, I think, to connect Le sacre with the long tradition of French music for dance. Music for dance is physical: it needs to support movement. Roth's hero Jean-Baptiste Lully, who conducted with a stave, adding percussion effects, got so involved with the music that he rammed the stave into his foot, got gangrene and died. We can hear "modern" Rites of Spring anytime, but it will be good to hear it expressed with the vigour and brashness of the baroque.

Above is a very good, lively and physical Rite of Spring.  This time we have Valery Gergiev, with the Mariinsky Ballet and Orchestra. Fantastic performance - vivid, spirited, barbaric. Violence is exactly what we need to hear. Diaghilev and Stravinsky were shaking up everything comfortable society expected.

Look at the dancers : their bodies contort in strange, stylized twitches. They prance on tiptoe for long periods - how painful their calf muscles must feel!. When they rest, their hips are turned 45 degrees, their feet turned sideways. They are making a sacrifice, just as the Chosen Maiden is doing. The Mariinsky dancers move with superb precision,  The gestures look simple but they're not, and they're executed with such commitment that you know there's more to this ballet than dance. It is a ritual, a shamanistic ceremony. connecting to ancient mysteries of fertility and rebirth. 

Gergiev is in his element. Forcefulness finessed with discipline.  The narrative is savage, but not barbaric. Gergiev directs with utter precision: every note, every gesture feels right, executed with conviction.  He makes the Rite of Spring explode, but it's a controlled explosion, all the more impressive because it's done with high professional standards. Listening to this feels like a work-out, physically and emotionally. Which is what it's all about.  This time I thought of dense geological layers, relentless forces of nature. The Bear People respond with the only resources they really have: their bodies. Hence the Sacrifice and thus renewal. The Rite of Spring could never be an opera.

This performance, at the Champs-Élysées. uses a reconstruction of the original choreography and designs. That's been done before, but this time, Gergiev reinvigorates the piece. He's not reverential or polite. We're not listening to a museum display. He makes The Rite of Spring explode, as shocking and fresh as it might have sounded in 1913.

New Mariinsky II Theatre Gala Opening

The new Mariinsky Theatre, or Mariinsky II, St Petersburg, looks fantastic. It sounds fantastic too.

The design concept is so innovative that you should read the architectural specs. Here's a link with lots of photos to Diamond Schmitt Architects site.  More details on the Mariinsky site here. The new building is integrated into the historic urban landscape of the city. There's a rooftop ampitheatre with views across St Petersburg. The old building remains, linked to the new over a canal. Jack Diamond, the architect, says "we have used the elements of the old architecture, which are a masonry base and a metal roof. Instead of a classical portico, we have used great structural glass bay-windows......The public areas have an exuberance and a fun because going to the opera house today is, in a sense, in competition with people who can watch it on television, see it on their computer screen, can have videos and play them at will. The difference is that going to an event is a gregarious activity. And I often think that before the show begins, and during intermission, it is not the musicians who are the performers, it is the audience."

Anything new is bound to enrage but from what we've seen so far, the building is strikingly beautiful. The whole structure seems to glow with light and transparency.  How moth eaten and oppressive the red and gold trappings of traditional theatre seem in comparison! Now the focus is on performance, not performance space. The acoustic is breathtaking. It must be balm to sit and listen in a theatre like this, purpose built for music. Yet references to the past abound, blending clean modern elegance with references to theatre history and Russian culture in particular. The Opening Gala shows a backdrop of the "old" theatre with its Imperial Box.  A group of schoolchildren sing the Ave Maria, their young voices ringing out pure and clear: past, present and future unite in a single image.

Simplicity and extrvagance combine. A solo piano demonstrates the glorious acoustic. Then the stage explodes in a gorgeous tableaux: the opening scene of Boris Gudonov, bells ringing triumphantly. The Boyars, priests and Imperial retinue emerge from the crowd of massed peasants. A moment of sheer theatre! Yet there's no heaviness in this staging.The singing shines, not the costumes, though they're suitably "historic". Naturally, there's a political element to the opening of an extremely important new house like the Mariinsky, funded completely by the state. Yet Vladimir Putin is seen sitting in the orchestra stalls. Perhaps this is shrewd. On the other hand, it says much about the role of cultural heritage in Russia. Does art transcend petty concerns? One should sincerely hope so. The men of the Mariinsky chorus emerge from a backdrop showing the Tsar's box. They look like mafia in their dinner jackets, but the sound of their singing connects to the past, distant and not so  distant.

The new Mariinsky opens out internally, too. Although much has been written about the public face of the building, what's intriguing to theatre people is the backstage technology. This, too, must be state of the art, if the Opening Gala is anything to go by. The Mariinsky Ballet are shown dancing Balanchine against a pristine backdrop that suggests a dance studio. The backdrop them morphs into page after page of "etchings" evoking ballets past. Almost miraculously as the music turns to Carmen, the backdrop transforms into full, naturalistic colour.  Later, the Rite of Spring is recreated in Nicolas Roerich's designs and elements of Diaghilev's choreography. A "curtain" of light descends, and René Pape appears, singing Mefistofele.  This is projection technology at its finest, suggesting new possibilities, just as the advent of electric light did 100 years ago. Vivid changes of scene happen in an instant : no clunky machinery, no interruptions to dramatic flow.

Plácido Domingo sings Winterstürme wichen dem Wonnemond. His voice isn't what it was but who cares? Everyone loves him, and rightly so. Later, he takes over from Valéry Gergiev at the podium, and sings along from the pit. Anna Netrebko feigns surprise, but we all know she's in on the joke. Netrebko steals the entire show, singing almost non-stop for the last half an hour of the gala, often solo. Netrebko is in superb form: this evening will be one of the great memories of her life. Putin applauds with a grimace, but who cares? Gergiev, the Birthday Boy, throws his arms around her and kisses her. Surrounded by Pape, Domingo, Nikitin, pretty much the whole company, chorus and ballet, Netrebko is absolutely radiant. The girl from Krasnodar will forever be associated with the new Mariinsky.  Watch the full broadcast here, it's superb, and extremely well filmed. Beats the Bolshoi opening gala by leagues.

Summary - Edinburgh Gergiev LSO Brahms Szymanowski

Gergiev's Brahms and Szymanowski series at the Edinburgh Festival, ahead of the Barbican tour later this year, has majored in loudness and big climaxes, with a lack of dynamic variation or subtlety. Few of the works on the programme lend themselves well to this approach and this, combined with the surprising programming, has made the listening experience patchy. There have been rare moments when a less bombastic approach has crept in and some very enjoyable music has resulted. Several of these were in the final performance [link to review of this].

There have been some surprise hits too, in particular a good and illuminating account of Szymanowski's rarely performed Second Symphony, especially its theme-and-variation-style second movement. The concert including this is well worth going to, just for the opportunity to hear this particular work.

Hearing the initially surprising pairing with Brahms does find occasional points of illumination, such as the second symphony of Szymanowski's (a good account, see above) with the finale of the Brahms Fourth, and the so-called Haydn variations with both. One of the threads in parallel for the two composers which is brought into focus by hearing this unusual joint cycle is  that from an expansive middle period - for Szymanowksi perhaps his most individualistic and distinctive - there is a return to more traditional forms and influences.

Brahms's Fourth Symphony was found 'severe' by early listeners and collaborators such as Clara Schumann, and whilst I recognise the considerable achievement of its finale, I can appreciate this criticism and in some ways find his Second and Third symphonies easier and more enjoyable to listen to. There is something  more forbiding and austere  about the more academic and structured Fourth, where Brahms seeks to resolve the post-Beethoven differently by returning to Baroque influenced musical architecture but coloured and viewed through the lens of the Romantic era in which he lived and wrote. This however, was better served by Gergiev's possibly surprising approach to Brahms, which has tended – perhaps surprisingly - towards cool and technical, characterised by precision rather than feeling. It is almost as if he sought to overcompensate against the risk of bringing too much theatricality with him from the opera house, instead being at best rather controlled and at times almost impatient or even perfunctory.

Szymanowski, long inspired by travel and the exotic, in his late period looked more to his homeland and to overt influences of folk music, such as from the Tatra  Mountains where he made his home, which can be heard in the Fourth Symphony's third (last) movement. Unlike Brahms – one of whose greatest achievements  was the agnostic German Requiem – Szymanowski turned or returned to traditional religion, for example setting a very beautiful Stabat Mater, which is to be heard in London in 2013 and  a Litany to the Virgin Mary (contemporaneous with the fourth symphony and the second violin conerto heard here).

Alongside the return to the culture and religion of his homeland, he abandoned such rich orchestral colour and lush soundworld for a leaner, more ascetic aesthetic, brought out well in the moving performance of the Second Violin Concerto by Leonidas Kavakos. Both composers seemed to have returned to tradition from a high water mark of emotional expressiveness  and expansiveness, to look homewards rather than abroad and to the past rather than to the future in their late works, the last being a particualr disappointment to the emerging young composer Lutoslawski, who saw Szymanowksi as a leading force in Polish modernism and was disappointed by this conservatism.

The later works of both these composers being leaner and more pared down in their mood  meant though  that they were better suited to the style of playing here, hence the performances of these late works were more enjoyable. The softer, more mellow mid-period of both composers has suffered most, especially that of Szymanowski which calls for positive lushness, not merely for softness, delicacy or lyricism. The leaner more ascetic and more formal later works fared better. The good reception received on the opening night for the first violin concerto, which is of the Romantic middle period, was largely due to the excellent playing and local popularity of  soloist Nicola Benedettini.

One of the points to emerge from the programming in this cycle is that amongst Szymanowski's considerable output, works with a solo line  fare better for both audience and performers. A virtuostic pianist himself, and the close friend of a virtuoso violinist, he writes well for both of these instruments and for voice. The inclusion of one or more soloists seems to bring a welcome focus and make these works more readily coherent and hence more accessible. Most of the real successes of this series fell into this category.

In a recent interview, Gergiev – who is known for his command of the Russian repertoire and for his opera conducting - has expressed his desire to claim Szymanowski as a Russian composer and emphasise his Russian connections. This may go some way towards explaining why his interpretation of this composer's works emphasises theatricality.  (Interestingly, it is notable that arguably the most successful collaboration in overall terms of the entire cycle was with a fellow Russian soloist.) It is not, though, a position completely congruent with the stated aims of the promoters of the concert cycle, who wish to portray Symanowski as a European composer and to emphasise his links westwards rather than eastwards.

However, the listener may readily discern an influence or connection with several other composers when hearing Szymanowski, not only the somewhat tenuous one put forward here with Brahms. The Fourth Symphony might well suggest Ravel, but its Nietzschian inspirations are in common with Delius, in particular the Mass of Life, which I have already referred to, as well as that composer more generally, again a point I made here earlier. Russian inspirations and connections are not hard to make: not only Scriabin (like Szymanowski, an impressive pianist) – quite obviously – but also Stravinsky, and at times Rachmaninov. However, they are perhaps connections more on the fringes than firmly within the Russian mainstream.

What may emerge is that Szymanowski – who for much of his life viewed himself as a cosmopolitan and an explorer – was eclectic and influenced by many styles, experimenting musically and travelling widely. Perhaps Szymanowski  belongs not to Europe,  nor exclusively to Russia but both; and perhaps he is a universalist who is not tied to one cultural influence alone? This might well be how he would have liked to see himself and how he would have liked to be remembered.

There is an argument that rather than try to pigeon-hole his writing with one particular tradition or musical influence, it could more informatively be presented alongside a variety of composers and works with which it had relationships. It has been suggested elsewhere that Szymanowksi is best heard in small doses: perhaps a more sympathetic view would be that it is best heard alongside helpful programming of suitable repertoire.

It would almost seem that, as his 60^th birthday approaches, rather than offer a valedictory tour of his best and best known repertoire, Gergiev – known for Russian repertoire and his association with the Kirov/ Marinsky  Opera - has set himself a personal challenge to conduct the music least suited to his style and temperament that he could find and came up with the camp, extravagant and indeed homoerotic Polish aristocrat Szymanowksi on the one hand, and and the measured but tender warmth of Brahms, backlit by the slow tide of the North  Sea, on the other. One might also wonder whether the objective was to explore different approaches, or to try to fit a one-size-for-all Russian-style performance to as many composers as possible? Is this the musical equivalent of the celebrity jungle challenge, or of driving tanks down the streets of Paris? The end result is rather like eating Turkish delight with steak, the steak being a bit tough and the Turkish delight having too much gelatine and not enough sugar!

So who benefits from this musical equivalent of the bush-tucker challenge? Probably the soloists - who all emerge well: Nicola Benedettini; Steve Davislim; Denis Matsuev and perhaps especially Leonidas Kavikos. Also, very much, Roman Simovic, leader of the LSO, who has had consistently good solos across several works.

Should London audiences go to this mishmash when it transfers to the Barbican? The final concert is well worth seeing, for the very dynamic chemistry at the front of stage in the second violin concerto alone, the good account of Szymanowksi four a further bonus. The second is also worth  going to, for the opportunity to hear  a live performance and a good account of the Szymanowksi two. If you enjoyed Eotvos' account of the Song of the Night, only go to this account of that same work if you want to be reminded how good that was. If you are – or might be – interested in hearing more of Szymanowksi, this performance cycle could give a very misleading impression and there are a number of more sympathetic interpretations  available on recordings, including a budget  set of the complete works issued by Naxos, which I have reviewed for MusicWebInternational, a bargain at under £20, good playing if patchy sound quality. It is regrettable that the admirable initiative to tour a major cycle of this composer's work so as to make it better known to audiences in western Europe presents  them with this mainly unsympathetic and idiosyncratic interpretation. If you want a good account of the Brahms symphonies, the LSO/ Haitink partnership  is not surpassed here, now available from the orchestra at a modest price, nor are any of the DG recordings.

Gergiev is conducting Tchaikovsky Cinderella on the final weekend of the Edinburgh Festival, and also at BBC Prom 52 on 22nd August

photo: Marco Borggreve