The last Shostakovich symphony of the Proms, as the last week ran its course. And Daniele Gatti, with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, determining not to let it all end with a whimper, created something of a big bang.
This was the Symphony No 10, one of Shostakovich’s greatest, and one that releases so much pent-up energy after the death of Stalin. This was a meticulously prepared performance, beautifully played throughout. But it seemed determined to banish unhappy memories — and in Shostakovich they cannot so easily be erased.
Even in the long and reflective first movement, so gently coaxed into life, Gatti was eager to find its song and its dance. As soon as the clarinet had introduced its first real melody — as if from the ether — Gatti gave it lilting life. This was not the flat plain of subtly shifting tones and timbres, but an amiable landscape — almost a pastoral.
When the horns and trombones entered with their sombre falling notes, there was little sense of alarm. Gatti chose not to maximise the shifts of pacing, not to give that extra split second of silence that sets these entries into relief and increases the frisson factor. But that was clearly not how he heard things.
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The savage second movement was a tour de force on the part of the strings — but it was debrutalised. And the slow-ish movement, with its cryptic personal monogram motifs, was without any doubt sung out as a sensuous love song to Shostakovich’s beloved Azerbaijani pupil, Elmira Nazirova. All legitimate, even likeable — but ever so slightly trivialising and lessening the power of the work as a whole.
Joshua Bell’s Bruch Violin Concerto, before the interval, was shameless and glorious showmanship. And this work can take it. I can’t remember ever hearing so many notes in the right place, gleaming excitedly as the bow swept them upwards, and as the fingers made light of the double- stopping. Totally focused energy, bitingly incisive rhythms, and sheer élan: the orchestra loved it — and so did the audience, whose enthusiasm was rewarded by a highly seductive unaccompanied encore from John Corigliano’s The Red Violin.