Great cities often have more than one symphony orchestra. Though to some extent it's been in the shadow of the better known Staatskapelle, Dresden’s own Philharmonie has had a reputation for solid music-making during the 150 years of its existence. Here, embarking on its sixth UK tour, the orchestra was in the very capable hands of Stanislav Kochanovsky. Together with the rising star violinist Maria Ioudenitch they fashioned an eminently satisfying evening’s entertainment.
The Philharmonie may not demonstrate the virtuosity of crack ensembles or have the last word in tonal refinement, but like many German orchestras it has a wonderfully warm and supple string section. Throughout the evening the sound was anchored from the double basses up, with highly expressive violas that made their mark in the first movement of the symphony, and throbbing violins which commanded attention in the opening piece, Mussorgsky’s very atmospheric Prelude to Khovanshchina. What also struck me was the inherent feel for balance between the sections. Though this was also the conductor’s doing, at no point did the brass overwhelm the strings. Instead, these instruments provided additional colour or crowned the textures in orchestral tutti.
Shostakovich’s Violin Concerto no. 1 in A minor not only marries the Baroque pattern of slow-fast-slow-fast with episodes of enormous emotional intensity, it presents the composer’s musical cipher of DSCH (D, E flat, C, B) in the second movement. One of the works destined to linger at the back of a desk drawer until the relaxation of the post-Stalin era, it has the ability to encapsulate the world of pain, private grief experienced within the recesses of a domestic environment. Ioudenitch demonstrated why she is already making waves: secure intonation, fearless technical virtuosity and expressive richness, her burnished and earthy tone matched by the dark woodiness of the Dresden strings. In the opening Nocturne there was a sense of personal anguish, complemented by the grim choir of woodwind voices, all decked out in battleship grey. Equally affecting were the moments of numbness as she moved into her instrument’s highest register, the catch-in-the-throat feeling of isolation and desolation, most vividly heard as she pared her tone down to the barest pianissimo at the close, life’s threads fraying at the edges.
In the Scherzo, which David Oistrakh memorably described as “evil, demonic, prickly”, Ioudenitch’s bow scythed the air furiously, while the orchestral coven of witches cackled away. In the following Passacaglia I was struck yet again by the special sonorities Shostakovich uncovers for the evocation of pain: a mournful cor anglais set against doleful bassoons, the rock-steady string pizzicatos at the close, yielding in a superb transition to the extended cadenza. Nods to circus-music and the helter-skelter fun of the Ninth Symphony characterised the concluding Burlesque.