Nail-biting Shostakovich from the BBC National Orchestra of Wales at the Proms

The first movement of Shostakovich’s Symphony no. 13 in B flat minor, “Babi Yar” sets a poem by Yevgeny Yevtushenko about the 1941 massacre near Kyiv. As the BBC Proms audience prepared to take its seats on Friday evening, Donald Trump sat down with Vladimir Putin in Alaska to discuss an invasion that has led to the deaths of thousands of Ukrainians. Dangerous times and a dangerous score, which in the hands of Ryan Bancroft and the BBC National Orchestra of Wales throbbed with menace.

Before the Shostakovich came two doses of what a certain generation might have called “funky vibes”. First, the UK premiere of Sofia Gubaidulina’s Revue Music for Symphony Orchestra and Jazz Band. Originally composed in 1976 and subsequently revised in 1995 and 2002, it’s a strange work that has neo-Wagnerian sounds clashing with edgy American jazz. It never quite settles, with the constant flipping between classical and jazz sounding more incoherent than strategically chaotic. Backing singers provide ethereal vocals, reinforced by indecipherable whispering from players in the orchestra and towards the end, spoken lines from the poet Afansy Fet. There were strong performances from the orchestra – a fine cello solo and pinpoint percussion stood out – but failed to make a convincing case for the work.

Benjamin Grosvenor then joined the orchestra for Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G major, taking the first movement with a ruminative and delicate touch, the tone warm and rounded. Proms audiences often come in for some criticism, but in the second movement there was a remarkable sense of hush and attentiveness to Grosvenor’s playing, where he conjured the lightest of sounds, with a style that at times seemed to evoke Bach in the profundity of sound produced. The balance with the orchestra was deftly managed, with silky clarinets and fragrant flutes caressing, rather than competing with, Grosvenor’s playing.  And then the third movement, a boisterous joy with pert brass interjecting across suddenly spunky piano-playing, every note defined and vibrant. A pulse-rating treat that rightly drew cheers from the audience.

Babi Yar is a very different kind of beast, but provided similar excitement for the technical control that Bancroft and his players exhibited without any detriment to the feeling of roiling fury that underpins the symphony. Bass-baritone Kostas Smoriginas joined the orchestra and the lower voices of the BBC National Chorus of Wales (on excellent form), to deliver Yevtushenko’s bleak and sardonic lines. 

Smoriginas doesn’t have the largest instrument, and his lower register was occasionally covered by the orchestra, but he showed an appealing top voice, bright and even, particularly in the fourth movement, Fears. Bancroft led a vivid, sprawling interpretation, keeping his players together while still giving them their head. On past occasions, Bancroft’s approach to climaxes has sometimes been limp; here, particularly in the first movement, they were approached and surmounted with flawless pacing, the build-up palpable, rushing, but not rushed, the peak a shuddering, howling release. The BBC NOW brass throughout was on top form, swaggering in the second movement over the cocaine-high effervescence of the rest of the orchestra, a splendid counter to the sombre lyricism of the third movement. It was a tribute to Bancroft, his players, and indeed the audience, that we joined in a collective silence as the fifth movement concluded; a sign of the impact this splendid performance made.