VoxCarnyx

City Halls, Glasgow

Mozart wrote his “Posthorn” Symphony – or rather modelled it out of existing music from an earlier Serenade – during his younger Salzburg days. Shostakovich’s Symphony No 14, on the other hand, is a product of a composer at the opposite end of his life, written in 1969 while he was recovering from a second heart attack and clearly – given its all-pervading theme of death – consumed by thoughts of mortality. Programme these two works together and the outcome is stark, challenging and thought-provoking.

All the more so when the spectre of Covid still dictates social practices and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra continues to deliver its shortened programmes without an interval. Conductor Mark Wigglesworth took full advantage of this juxtapositional opportunity inspiring performances that expressed the perfection and precision of both works, but equally capitalised on their differential elements to striking effect.

That’s not to say that the Mozart, originating from music originally composed to celebrate the end of the academic year in Salzburg, is all joy and rapture. Right from the start Wigglesworth shaped its gathering moments with thoughtfulness and finesse, its phrases lovingly shaped and gently insistent. There was always a spring in the SCO’s step, though, a light-footed Italianate joie-de-vivre which reached its ultimate outlet in the exuberant finale.

The contrast with the opening bars of the Shostakovich could hardly have been more marked. For this, the orchestra, pared down to strings and percussion, was joined by soprano Elizabeth Atherton and bass Peter Rose, whose reading of this unconventional symphony – effectively a song cycle to texts contemplating the cold reality of unnatural death, but with enough organic cohesion to justify its nomenclature – was laced with palpable emotion, energised containment and neatly-gauged interaction.

The scene was set in an instant, the strings eliciting Shostakovich’s gaunt, austere opening textures with chilling simplicity, amplified by the rich sonority of Rose’s first utterances, Lorca’s De Profundis in Russian, to which the lowest strings issued a sombre undercurrent. The allusions to Britten are tangible, not surprising given he was the work’s dedicatee. But while his shadow looms persistently, Shostakovich’s progressive voice remains singularly probing and magnificent throughout. 

Atherton’s performance identified the symphony’s visceral core, emotionally and visually provocative. Rose cut a more stoical, trenchant persona. Both were acutely reactive to the concentrated brilliance of the orchestral backdrop, a canvas swarming with virtuoso solos and highly-evocative percussion effects. Wigglesworth’s cool control had the effect of heightening the dramatic tension and, at key moments, its iridescent flights of ecstasy. A moving performance, all the more so for the context it appeared in.

Ken Walton