Review of BBC Philharmonic concert 1st February 2020

At first sight, putting Myaskovsky’s sixth symphony into a programme immediately following the Hallé’s performance of Beethoven’s ninth might seem an inspired comparison. Both have four long movements, and in both cases the last is a choral one.

But in Myaskovsky’s the choral part is actually optional – putting words to the tune of an Orthodox chant that could stand on its own if necessary – whereas you could hardly say that the words are optional in Beethoven’s case.

I was glad that Vassily Sinaisky presented the 1923 symphony, though, because it’s a work with a voice all its own. Epic, in the post-Mahlerian tradition of being a journey that crosses many territories, it also seems, subtly, to speak to the Russian nation’s soul in the way that many of Shostakovich’s symphonies did.

Maybe Myaskovsky was defying political orthodoxy in one way, because it’s not the conventional darkness-to-light symphony that was routinely expected in his time: there’s a Dies Irae in the final movement, and the chant is a funerary one, after all, despite the previously dominating themes of jollity, using songs of revolutionary fervor. But on the other hand he gets quotations from the death of Boris Godunov and the end of Tchaikovsky’s sixth into his first movement, not his last, and right at the end there is a clear impression of serenity.

At least there was in Sinaisky’s interpretation, which was as rich and many-layered as the work itself. Its slow movement contained some seriously beautiful playing from the wind soloists of the Philharmonic, as the strings, led by Yuri Torchinsky, were soulful in their expression also.

Soloist in Szymanowski’s Violin Concerto no. 2 was Liza Ferschtman – not Tasmin Little, as originally planned, but what a superb substitute. She responded to the varying emotions of the piece with both dreaminess and fierce attack, dispatching the mid-work cadenza with panache, and playing the long lyrical interludes of the second part gorgeously, matched by some purple tutti passages from the orchestra near the end.

She followed this display with another of technical skill in the service of beauty: Ysaÿe’s solo sonata no. 5, first movement.

The concert opened with Rimsky-Korsakov’s music: two scenes from The Golden Cockerel ballet. It was an attractive appetizer, with the familiar Wedding Procession tune built up to effectively and then rumbustiously played, at least in intent.

Vassily Sinaisky