Kings Place, London
In the first two instalments of this miniseries curated by the chamber ensemble Endymion that focuses on two major figures from the Soviet era, Shostakovich and Alfred Schnittke, it was the former that received the lion's share. Neither of the works by one of Shostakovich's leading successors showed him at his best. The 1972 Suite in the Old Style is a collection of five movements from film scores, all couched in a vein of 18th-century pastiche that almost any composition student could emulate. Violinist Krysia Osostowicz and pianist Michael Dussek despatched it efficiently, but without making it seem essential listening. More worthwhile was the 1988 Piano Quartet, a free-flying fantasy using the fragmentary sketch of the scherzo from Mahler's early, incomplete work in the same medium. Schnittke's darker impulses are given fuller play here, though the result still does not really add up to a significant achievement.
Fleshed out with performances of Shostakovich's substantial Cello Sonata with soloist Jane Salmon needing more expressive emphasis, and his final work, the mighty Viola Sonata, in which soloist Asd�s Valdimarsd�ttir rarely dug deep into the music, this was a programme without a true highlight.
Fortunately Friday's concert picked up considerably, mainly owing to the presence of soprano Joan Rodgers, who proved an impressive exponent of three major and very different Shostakovich cycles. She began with the characteristic Satires, relaying its mannered ironies with finely judged vocal acting, and her tone glowed in the surprisingly warm-hearted Spanish Songs, one of the few works in the composer's catalogue that seeks merely to charm and does so effortlessly. But she and the Endymion players were at their best in the spare but emotionally weighty Seven Romances after poems by Alexander Blok, which left a profound impression.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2011/may/16/goodbye-stalin-shostakovich-schnittke-review
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