Dmitri Shostakovich: Symphonies 6 and 9 (Philharmonia Records)
★★★★☆
Four months ago, I wrote about one of the least satisfying Shostakovich records I have ever heard, a performance where the conductor, a hyped young Finn, skied across the musical surface without penetration or strategic concept. The gloom that overwhelmed me at the onset of a full cycle of symphonies from this unprepared interpreter has since been mitigated slightly by the emergence of a parallel cycle from a Finnish compatriot, Santtu-Matias Rouvali.
Turning 40 this year, Rouvali is the music director of the Philharmonia Orchestra in London and a long shot to be the next chief in San Francisco or Los Angeles. These symphonies play to his strengths — uncanny control of dynamics, filigree colour changes and a grasp of symphonic architecture that is uncommon among hot-shot baton wavers.
The sixth symphony, written on either side of the Second World War, defied Kremlin expectations. The sixth opens with a morbid citation from Mahler’s tenth, proceeding through a movement of bad jokes to a heart-racing, helter-skelter conclusion. The ninth refused to show exaltation at Stalin’s victory over Hitler. The symphonies express a stubborn detachment from external agendas. That is their enduring relevance.
Many conductors struggle to balance the historical narrative with the present time. Not Rouvali. Tamping down undercurrents of anxiety, he lets the music unfold as a story of everyday life in a terror state, much of it mundane, at times mortally exciting. What I like best in Rouvali is his calculated distance from exaggeration. The second movement of the ninth symphony, marked ‘moderato’, is a masterclass in caution. Its controlled tension rattled the fillings in my teeth.
These imaginative performances are beautifully executed by a pedigree London orchestra. Rouvali is the opposite of a roller-coaster conductor. He may never see his face blazoned on billboards. But he is very much a maestro for our times, immersed in musical thought. He ought to be a contender for those orchestras that still put music first.
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