Janacek & Shostakovich

Halle Orchestra, Brighton Festival Chorus, Mark Elder

Saturday 23 May, 2015

Janacek gives us such life and vitality in his scores they can hardly fail to leave an audience uplifted. When these are combined with the enthusiasm and joy of Shostakovich’s Concerto for Piano, Trumpet and Strings, we are bound to leave feeling better.

The Halle opened with the Suite from The Cunning Little Vixen where the warmth and sweetness of the score was allowed to glow within the ambience of the concert hall rather than being restricted to the opera pit. Mark Elder kept the pace firmly in hand so that the softer moments never tipped over into sentimentality but there was never any sense of the academic to the playing.

I first encountered Shostakovich’s concerto when I worked, almost half a century ago, for a ballet company where we had a work set to it called Attitude Greque. It was as tongue in cheek as the score itself and always a favourite. Pianist Benjamin Grosvenor was joined by the Halle’s first trumpet Gareth Small for an exhilarating romp through the score which shows the composer at his most relaxed. The combination really should not work but it does because of the sustained invention of the musical line and the insistence that we do not take it too seriously. The slow movement was beautifully phrased and gave way to a riotous conclusion. All perfectly conceived and delivered.

The Glagolitic Mass is deceptive. Though Janacek was an atheist the work comes across as emotionally more convincing than many settings from committed believers. There is an urgency, a fervour, to the score which was beautifully captured by all involved, particularly the incisive choral singing and the strident tessitura of tenor Peter Berger. Darius Battiwalla was the organist for the extended impassioned organ solo towards the end of the work. The brass section was a delight throughout, producing raucous fanfares and ear-splitting power as required. in these hands the score seems at times to be almsot uncomfortably modern.

As the main classical offering of the Festival this year it was a fine evening, and appeared to be sold out with a queue waiting for returns. Perhaps there is a need for more?