<<  -- 7 --  Bill Newman    BERLIN FESTIVAL DIARY

With indelible memories of Mravinsky and the Leningrad Philharmonic at the Edinburgh Festival in the great years, I looked forward to experiencing his protégé Yuri Temirkanov with the same orchestra, now the St Petersburg Philharmonic, in an all-Shostakovich evening. Things haven't altered -- even the personnel look the same! The style of playing, with overwhelming climaxes and long stretches of pianissimo 'dialogue' (with its magical aura of marvelously sustained beauties), remain intact.

Non assuming is certainly not the way to describe the St Petersburg Conductor-in-Chief's appearance in front of his players. I had a face-on-view image of arms, hands, wrists and fingers straight down just below waist height, knuckles turning and select digits extended to indicate new musical entries and phrasing nuances. His interacting eyes, brows and changing facial expressions pinpointed the composer's ever-changing moods with their rising-falling temperature surges over lengthy time spans. With no baton to watch, every member of that orchestra knows what to expect, and never dares to take their eyes off the guy in charge.

David Geringas was the lyrical soloist in the Cello Concerto No 1, the antithesis of Rostropovich, but no less revealing as an interpreter of this wonderful work, with the performance growing in stature as it progressed.

Shostakovich's Seventh, the Leningrad Symphony, perhaps like Mahler 7 displaying the best and the worst of its creator's worldly inspirations, is in reality the most fulsome of this composer's symphonic-cum-narrative creations, personifying the horrors of warfare against a backdrop of the Russian people's simple, devotional beliefs. The main weakness, as many acknowledge, is the reiterated Bartókian motive that overstays its welcome two thirds through the opening movement, yet Temirkanov kept flow and consistent buildup here, as elsewhere, under masterly control. An architectural grasp of vast structures and a total cogency of expressive, poetic detail are, after all, his metier.

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