Cyrillic from Britain

The London Symphony Orchestra performed in Moscow

The London Symphony is one of those orchestral greats whose appearance in Russia is considered a rare gift: the last time the LSO was in Moscow was in 1979, with the participation of Benjamin Britten as conductor and Svyatoslav Richter and Mstislav Rostropovich as soloists. The current visit is marked by the presence of Valery Gergiev at the podium in the status of chief conductor, which Gergiev, who has been collaborating with the orchestra since 1988, has acquired since the beginning of 2007. The reason for the mutual sympathy between the Russian musician and the British band is clear: the music of the twentieth century. Like other serious European orchestras, the London Symphony has clear repertoire priorities that form the basic images of modern symphonic culture. Such vectors for LSO today are Stravinsky, Debussy and Prokofiev - three authors important for understanding the 20th century, which Londoners have already begun to comprehend historically.

Evening in Moscow is the second part of a concert triptych for the 125th anniversary of Igor Stravinsky, begun in London at the Barbican Hall and completed in St. Petersburg, near which, in Oranienbaum, on June 17, 1882, the future composer was born into the family of the singer of the Imperial Mariinsky Theater Fyodor Stravinsky , whose long life consisted of several “lives”.

Its two important fragments formed the framework of the evening, which had a clear plot and clear dramaturgy. In the first part there is an abstract Symphony in three movements, written in America (1945), in the second there is brightly national music for the ballet “Petrushka” (1911). At the American Stravinsky, Moscow became acquainted with the LSO, which showed itself to be a serious and self-sufficient group. As it should be in orchestras of this class, everything stood in place and was marked with dignity, but the transcendental heights that were immediately desired still did not loom. There was no special refined chic that this transparent, mathematically verified material, based on dialogues with different cultural images (film music, classicism, jazz), unceremoniously lined up at the back of the head, needed. LSO and Gergiev, to whom this music in principle suits, performed it without subtext, turning a blind eye to the position of the author, subtly amusing himself with the game of language. However, such directness turned out to be a good dramatic move: after the old and dry Stravinsky, the young and lyrical Prokofiev emerged as some kind of clot of solar energy. The first violin concert (1916-1917) is an example of a romantic attitude towards the world, which, it turns out, still existed in Russia. The 25-year-old graduate of the St. Petersburg Conservatory, who spent an absolutely happy rural childhood in the Russian south isolated from civilization, is filled with such a quiet delight in life that he devotes two extreme slow movements to it, with a short energetic shake between them. The accomplished soloist Vadim Repin discovered this beautiful image of the author, frozen in contemplation of beauty. In the finals of the extreme movements, the union of the soloist and the orchestra achieved such concentration, hiddenness and harmony that the entire huge mass of instruments, including the 1708 Stradivarius violin in the hands of the soloist, turned into a weightless metaphysical substance.

The answer to Prokofiev’s victory was “Petrushka”. Here, suddenly gaining freedom in the free Parisian air (the world premiere of the ballet in 1911 at the Russian Seasons), the former student of Rimsky-Korsakov instantly turns into a young genius, giving in just forty minutes a new sense of symphonic matter and a new image of the world. In these “amusing scenes”, the author, who still expresses himself using the Russian alphabet, tells the story of a farce theater, giving rise to so many instant sound discoveries that with a good orchestra this music turns into a luxurious theatrical performance that does not even require a stage. And so it happened: after the performance of Debussy’s three preludes (arranged for orchestra by the British composer Colin Matthews), Gergiev, for whom the music of “Petrushka” had already become part of the conductor’s image, suddenly reached a high energy level, and the LSO revealed all the expected miracles in it. The main thing is not even the sonic balancing act, although it is very tempting to perceive such a performance as a cascade of high-quality solos. What’s more important is that Londoners told this music in the first person, recalling that the Russian alphabet has long become part of world culture.

Marina BORISOVA