John Donne’s dictum that no man is an island extends to all creative artists. Any act of musical composition is embedded in the fabric of its time. Martinů’s Memorial to Lidice was written in American exile on hearing of the Nazi liquidation of a village in his Czech homeland. It made a powerful start to this concert by the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra, under its principal conductor Vladimir Jurowski, one of a series under the overarching theme of War and Peace at the heart of this year’s Hamburg International Music Festival. Jurowski’s keen ear for sonorities was already apparent in the rasping and grating sounds he drew from his powerful strings, together with two mighty strokes of the tam-tam followed by softer strokes echoing the pealing of a muffled bell.
Martinů’s teacher Suk was part of the Czech national cultural revival which sought to distance itself from the dominant influences within the Austro-Hungarian Empire. His Meditation on an old Czech Hymn in honour of the Czech patron saint Wenceslas stems from the outbreak of World War 1. Originally composed for string quartet, it was heard here in its version for string orchestra, continuing the poignant threnody of the opening work. It sounded remarkably modern, its dissonances tearing into the string textures and leaving gaping wounds, anguish leeching out into its hushed close.
By contrast, Suk’s earlier Fantasy in G minor for violin and orchestra, though containing dark colouring, is shot through with lyrical songfulness. Christian Tetzlaff was the very committed soloist, working seamlessly with the taut accompaniment provided by Jurowski, playing up the obvious debt to Dvořák and highlighting the pastoral influence of Humperdinck. To all intents and purposes the piece is like a short concerto, running to 20 minutes and mirroring the traditional pattern of fast-slow-fast sections. In particular, Tetzlaff had great fun with the helter-skelter scales and hi-jinks of the concluding Allegretto scherzando.
Shostakovich was a master at disguising his real intentions. Often described as a poem of suffering, his Eighth Symphony was dubbed the “Stalingrad” in the years after its composition in 1943, only to fall foul of the infamous Zhdanov decree five years later, in which his music was compared to “a piercing dentist’s drill, a musical gas chamber, the sort the Gestapo used”. In truth, Shostakovich had in mind not only the loss of life in World War 2 but also in the late 1930s when one-and-a-half million Russians were liquidated by order of the state.
Shostakovich 8 is one of the most powerful symphonic statements there are. Every performance, like the one here, should leave the listener emotionally drained and whipped to the core. Jurowski made the long opening Adagio sound like a turbo-charged companion piece to the Fifth Symphony. Grey skies, ashen faces, furtive steps in the dark, lips numbed by the intense cold: such pain-laden images flickered into being with the help of Jurowski’s magnificent strings, the shrieking flutes, biting oboes, snarling clarinets and howling bassoons. To be followed by utter desolation as a plangent cor anglais floated above the susurrating strings.
Jurowski made much of the grotesque twists present in the first Allegretto, his superb violas at the start of the third movement ushering in a contraption of chords relentlessly grinding away like an obsessive war machine. The Largo was sustained on the back of a Passacaglia bass-line, the flutter-tonguing of the four flutes being a further instance of the composer’s remarkable instrumentation. According to some sources, Shostakovich originally titled the Finale: “Through cosmic space the earth flies towards its doom.” In 2024 it still feels like that.
