It’s eleven years since Aurora Orchestra performed Mozart’s Symphony no. 40 from memory at the BBC Proms. Each year since, the anticipation of what they’ll tackle next has made them a sure-fire seller, and this year they filled the Royal Albert Hall twice. Packing the RAH at 11am on a Sunday is no mean feat, especially for Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony, not exactly light morning listening.
They generally begin with a kind of illustrated lecture, conductor Nicholas Collon talking us through the work, with orchestral excerpts, in recent years also introducing costumes, lighting and choreography. This year they went one step further, working with theatre company Frantic Assembly to present a dramatised account of Shostakovich’s struggles with Stalin and the Soviet authorities. Three bureaucrats (actors Polly Frame, Craig Stein and Sarah Twomey) presented their dilemmas regarding his opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, the Fourth Symphony and then the Fifth, with offstage cameos from Sam West (Stalin) and Petroc Trelawny (the telephone operator). They attempted to explain the opera’s popular reception then state rejection, and the Fourth Symphony’s subsequent suppression. Then Collon (as Yevgeny Mravinsky, who conducted the premiere) guided them through the Fifth Symphony, as the perfect Soviet symphony.
Or is it? Because Collon then deconstructed it once again in a very different light to point out possible references to Carmen, the first movement’s mocking march, and the painful Largo as requiem to those lost to the Soviet regime. And the finale – a triumphant celebration of the Soviet cause, or an affirmation of life triumphing over the very same, oppressive regime?
Meanwhile, dancer Max Revell, a silent Shostakovich, contorted and twisted his body, literally pulled in all directions. Men in black lifted and manhandled him, and also some of the musicians, who played their examples while upside down or in the air. The role of the bureaucrats, however, was softened. Those writing the damning Pravda article, or enforcing the censorship were surely more active than the passive confusion portrayed here – a whiff here of ‘we were only carrying out orders’. However, the device to demonstrate parallel interpretations of the symphony worked and, as ever with Shostakovich, there’s no definitive answer.
So the audience was primed and ready for the onslaught of the full performance. It’s a cliché, but there really was no place for the musicians to hide, and the commitment required right to the back desk of every section was total. The angular opening then mocking march of the opening movement was followed by aggressive lower strings at the start of the Scherzo, as well as the dark Mahlerian Ländler. Often unnoticed details were illuminated by everyone knowing the work so intensely – harp embellishments of a flute solo here, pianissimo pizzicato strings there. The third movement was delicately balanced and the ensemble effortless, with greater emphasis on beauty of sound here, rather than the pain of lament discussed earlier, until the violins and xylophone then impassioned cellos screamed out their cries. The final muted harp and celesta over very quiet strings ached of tragic loss.
Then the explosion of the final movement: pounding timps and brass immediately gripped. The standing musicians were at their freest to move and engage with each other, with sections of violins moving as one body as they scurried forward. The snare commenced the final build-up to the spectacular finish, and every musician knew exactly where this was going, but also their part in getting us there. When the strings reached those final intense 252 As, energy levels had reached fever pitch, leading to a truly breathtaking conclusion. Sunday lunchtime never felt so elementally exhilarating!
