United Kingdom Sibelius, Lindberg, Shostakovich: Christian Lindberg (trombone), Philharmonia Orchestra / Santtu-Matias Rouvali (conductor). Royal Competition Corridor, London, 2.11.2025. (AV-E)
Sibelius – Finlandia
Christian Lindberg – Trombone Concerto No.4, ‘Golden Eagle’
Shostakovich – Fifth Symphony ‘Stalin’ (1937)
Earlier than the live performance began, Peter Fuller (double bass) introduced that the Philharmonia Orchestra had been simply again from their eightieth birthday celebration US tour (assessment right here) ‘exhausted however energised’ and that the theme of the live performance was ‘identification’: private identification, religious identification, and nationwide identification, as portrayed by the programme’s composers: Sibelius, Lindberg, and Shostakovich. We had been left with the query: had been the closings bars of Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony meant to precise a ‘victorious triumph’ or a ‘hole triumph’?
The ‘identification’ of Sibelius’s Finlandia, dubbed ‘his hymn to his homeland’, was not ‘Nationalist’, however reasonably ‘Naturist’, as nature portrayed in its primordial nakedness refreshingly free from individuals. The galvanised and gleaming Philharmonia performed Finlandia with gusto and panache with the sonorous brass gleaming and stupendous strings swooning, with conductor enlisting the spirit of nature from his platooning gamers; not forgetting the intrepid timpanist, Håkon Kartveit, who performed with incisive verve.
Christian Lindberg’s extravagant and exuberant Trombone Live performance No.4, ‘Golden Eagle’, was commissioned by the Taipei Symphony Orchestra in 2010 and devoted to their conductor, Gilbert Varga, and it’s divided into three sections, every separated by a monologue-cadenza which has its personal distinctive voice. Lindberg doesn’t ‘determine’ along with his trombone: he is his trombone as it’s one in all his limbs, and never an appendage: his vice is his trombone’s voice: they’re one.
‘Golden Eagle’ is a kaleidoscope of tones, sounds, colors, moods: I by no means knew that the trombone may produce so many voices and noises, from sneezing to croaking, from laughing to farting, for this work was filled with ‘good’ and ‘dangerous’ humour, typically inflicting an attentive and animated viewers to ‘laugh-out-loud’ (as they are saying).
Reasonably uncommon for ‘modern’ composers, Christian Lindberg really has his ‘personal identification’ – a voice of his personal – and under no circumstances spinoff of different composers, as tediously customary in ‘modern’ music. Lindberg’s Trombone Live performance No.4, is a mesmerising masterpiece and was warmly acquired by an enthused viewers.
The elegantly elfistical Santtu-Matias Rouvali performed a totally flawless efficiency of Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony, ‘Stalin’, with all tempos accurately judged from starting to finish: accents, readability, phrasing, and dynamic vary had been exceptionally well-judged eliciting a extremely charged emotional depth from his immaculately tuned world-class orchestra.
The trenchantly weighty cellos and double basses opened the Moderato with a gritty thrusting depth that set the scene for the gloom and doom to return; notable all through was the incisive nailing depth of the timpanist and the glowing brass: world-class enjoying once more.
Rouvali performed the Allegretto, an uncouth waltz, with the suitable lilting grace and buoyant swagger with the affect of Mahler clearly evident; right here Rouvali performed with gracefully balletic actions the place each financial gesture was for the gamers and never only for present.
The eternally lingering Largo was profoundly shifting and cloyingly concentrated with the woodwind sounding soulful while questioning withdrawn right into a wasteland wilderness, with harp and strings sounding mournfully melancholic; the superlative strings secreted the struggling of Shostakovich: we may share and really feel his ache by means of their poignant enjoying.
The concluding Allegro non troppo once more was completely paced and exquisitely executed: the concluding passages had been overwhelming with the timpani and strings and concluding bass drum thwacks bringing the rating residence to a ‘hole victory’.
There was an extended drawn-out debate regarding the tempo of the closing bars of the Fifth; some conductors draw out the bass drum thuds to stress the vacancy of the ending (with out finish); while others take it faster but nonetheless sustaining the suitable sense of hollowness.
Kurt Masur with the London Philharmonic Orchestra is way too sluggish and sluggish right here and it simply all falls aside. I like Kurt Sanderling’s measured, grandiose conclusion that provides that further sense of dread (‘dwell’ Concertgebouw Orchestra, 1999). For, by having the bass drum strokes barely aside, the ‘empty’ house between every thud will increase the depth of the vacancy of that thud.
Famend music critic, Rob Pennock made an apt comparability between the closing of the Shostakovich Fifth to the closing of the March motion of Tchaikovsky’s Pathétique Symphony: ‘It’s really just like the Pathétique’s third motion March which desperately seeks however by no means finds triumph.’ [via personal email]. On this event, these hard-dry bass drum thwacks had been completely paced in expressing the ‘hole triumph’ that concluded the Fifth Symphony.
Having stated that, this live performance was a convincing triumph with the appreciative viewers enthralled and exhilarated.
Alexander Verney-Elliott
Featured Picture: Santtu-Matias Rouvali conducts the Philharmonia Orchestra on the Royal Competition Corridor © Mark Allan
