With the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France safely in their seats at the Maison de la Radio in Paris, the live and on-air audiences were informed that the evening’s conductor, Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla, is to be the orchestra’s new Principal Guest Conductor. From the way they played Shostakovich’s Symphony no. 15 in A major, this could be the start of a beautiful friendship.
The Fifteenth was the composer’s last symphony and takes his penchant for ironic ambiguity to levels beyond even those of his earlier works. A beginning and end on solo glockenspiel? Dozens of not-quite-quotes from the composer’s earlier works? The big opening theme from Siegfried’s Funeral March? The galop from the William Tell overture, messed about with in a variety of ways? What does it all mean? Could Stalin have been a Lone Ranger fan? (Sorry, this last is total speculation on my part).
And somehow, with Gražinytė-Tyla and the Philhar’ (as they’re called here), it was all under control and it all made sense. The word “fireball” is often applied to a person of small stature who exudes energy, but that would be a disservice to Gražinytė-Tyla, whose energy is immense but focused, with the utmost sharpness and precision of arm and upper body movement (unlike, say, Adès or Rouvali, she doesn’t do the deep knee bend thing). And the connection between her and the orchestra was palpable: I don’t think I’ve ever seen a bunch of musicians with their heads so unburied from their scores and so intently focused on their conductor’s every gesture. And I can’t remember the last time I’ve seen orchestral players grinning so broadly from ear to ear at every musical joke. Woodwind high jinks, subversive tuned percussion, some truly naughty trombone glissandi were all executed with sheer delight.
And goodness, what a sound! The big brass chorales were immense, woodwind solos were beautifully shaped, the strings rang crisp as winter sunshine. I feel for the radio engineers doing their best to cope with the dynamic range between the shock-and-awe tutti and the most evanescent of pianissimi.
This was the first concert in a series that paired works by Shostakovich and his sometime protegé Mieczysław Weinberg. The second half work was Weinberg’s “Kaddish” Symphony, also the composer’s last. The symphony is the composer’s tribute to the victims of the Warsaw Ghetto (the “Kaddish” being the Jewish prayer recited over the dead): it’s on a huge scale and plumbs the emotional extremes, from wild klezmer dances accelerating to near insanity to shrieks of despairing anguish.
There are two prominent solo parts. The first, for violin, was performed by Gidon Kremer, who has been a long-standing champion of Weinberg’s work. Sadly, Kremer did not seem like a well man. It’s not just that he looked frail moving on- and off-stage, it’s that his playing was unable to command attention. His playing failed to approach the quality of the magnificent recording of the “Kaddish” symphony that he and Gražinytė-Tyla made as recently as 2019.
By contrast, soprano Hulkar Sabirova was at the very top of her game. The role is a ferociously difficult wordless vocalise, and Sabirova’s voice veered between honey-sweet in the lyrical passages and heart-wrenching in the despair. Given that our most recent reviews of her have been as a knock-out Rosalinde in Die Fledermaus, Sabirova clearly has exceptional versatility to go with a very fine voice.
In all, the Weinberg achieved the sound quality but not the continuity and sense of purpose of the first half Shostakovich. But that was always going to be a tough act to follow...
