SHOSTAKOVICH WITH HANS GRAF
AND NIKOLAY DIDENKO
Singapore Symphony Orchestra
Esplanade Concert Hall
Thursday (31 March 2022)
This review was published in The Straits Times on 6 April 2022 with the title "SSO shines at full strength with Shostakovich".
A huge cheer erupted in Esplanade Concert Hall when Singapore Symphony Orchestra Chief Conductor Hans Graf announced that this was the first time a full-strength orchestra had assembled to perform a concert since the beginning of the Covid pandemic. The last was back in 5 March 2020, when Principal Guest Conductor Andrew Litton led the orchestra to perform Shostakovich’s Tenth Symphony.
Thus it seemed appropriate that Soviet era Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975) again headlined another landmark concert. The works programmed come from polar ends of his substantial output, beginning with the Suite on Verses by Michelangelo Buonarroti Op.145a, composed the year before he died from lung cancer. Scored for large orchestra including multiple percussion instruments, harp, piano and celesta, the 40-minute song cycle in eleven movements played like a sixteenth symphony.
The words, sung in Russian translated from original Italian, were by Renaissance Italian artist-sculptor Michelangelo, whose brilliant yet checkered career found a resonance with Shostakovich. Having to sublimate his artistic vision under the dictates of a totalitarian regime, Shostakovich found his voice by coding his music in creatively enigmatic guises.
The verses followed the trials and tribulations of an artist caught between conflicting world views, encompassing love, separation, creativity, exile, death and ultimately finding immortality. Despite massive orchestral forces, only small sections were employed at each turn to support Nikolay Didenko, a soloist in the hallowed tradition of Russian basses. A bear-like presence with a voice that could freeze blood within the veins, his was a richly nuanced performance that vividly captured all the emotions expressed within the pithy words.
Music in low registers dominated for most part, except in high-pitched passages denoting satire and irony. The final movement, Immortality, was uncharacteristically lighted-hearted to the point of frivolity. Quoted was a ditty written by the child Shostakovich, signifying this piece was his life’s work coming a full circle.
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| SSO Chief Conductor Hans Graf demonstrated Shostakovich's themes on the piano, much to the delight of the audience. |
The concert’s second half opened with Scherzo Op.1, the first published work of the thirteen-year-old wunderkind. Cheerfully innocent, its colourful five minutes, played with spirit and verve, reflected the influences of Shostakovich’s forebears, notably Rimsky-Korsakov and Glazunov. Only five years later came his Symphony No.1 in F minor Op.10, a masterpiece of true prodigiousness.
A work of astonishing boldness and ingenuity of instrumentation, it received a performance of incisive wit and dramatic sweep. Fully aware of its shock value, the music rapidly shifted between irony, Slavic pathos, comedy and ultimately a portent of tragedy. In full-blown climaxes of its third and fourth movements, one could only sit in awe of SSO’s magnificent brass section, heard for the first time in full voice. Pandemic or not, it was every bit worth the two-year long wait.
The arts benefits humanity, and the audience was encouraged by conductor Graf to donate to the Red Cross relief fund. The Russian Shostakovich would have cracked a wry smile to know that his music had aided the victims in Ukraine.
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