★★★★★
We haven’t lacked performances of the national anthem of Ukraine in recent weeks; indeed, there’s a danger now that as orchestras keep striking up the tune we are only paying lip service to a cause. What’s more, on paper, it might have seemed a little jarring for the Czech Philharmonic to play the anthem just before its Russian chief conductor Semyon Bychkov led them through the Czech national epic, Smetana’s Ma Vlast (My Country).
Yet in a short, humane speech, Bychkov spoke of common connections. Pieces such as Ma Vlast “bring us even closer to recognising that everyone has one’s roots in lands that brought us into the world,” he said. Perhaps he was thinking too of his homeland: he left Soviet Russia in his early twenties. “Slava Ukraini,” he then concluded. The anthem was itself brilliantly done. The Czech Philharmonic’s distinctive timbres — the almost throbbing strings, the fat, milky brass — sent the music straight to the stomach.
And Ma Vlast? It is a totemic work for this orchestra and the Czech nation but, as Bychkov intimated, that doesn’t mean it’s narrowly bellicose or jingoistic. Written at a time when there was no independent Czech state, Smetana’s guiding vision is established by the scene depicted in the first section, Vysehrad, a symbolic castle that was long since destroyed. Ma Vlast paints glorious images of Czech history and nature but does so through a mythic, half-illusory filter. One eye is always wet.
That was how it seemed here, anyway, with the combination of magnificent, tireless playing from the Czechs (it helped that there was a nifty change of personnel two thirds into the work) and rapturous conducting from Bychkov. True, he’s a conductor who sometimes likes to glory in pure sound and in the score’s less inspired moments he might have lightened some of the textures and set a more urgent pace. But there were so many glorious episodes: an impetuous, surging Vltava, a full-blooded Sarka, and — not normally a highlight — the hymnic Tabor, where the instruments seem to ape a gigantic organ.
It was a generous orchestra that also laid on a firework display to start the night. Yuja Wang, a bolt of energy in a tangerine dress, was in excellent form for Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No 1. The work is skittish in temperament (Rachmaninov did a huge redraft, but didn’t really fix it) but then so is this pianist. Cushioned by the rich, thick strings, she negotiated Rachmaninov’s expressive volatility with fizz and flair.
Residency continues March 16, barbican.org.uk
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