I only just made it to the Royal Albert Hall (the RPO and Daniele Gatti) in time thanks to a delayed train. Having arrived after the concert had sold out, I was prepared to be disappointed and had a reserve plan to cadge a ticket off someone leaving at the interval (there turned out to be a number of such people). But as I turned away I was called back by one of the people selling arena tickets, who had an unused complimentary ticket – my gratitude goes to them if they happen to be reading this. (I thought only singers, and in some cases conductors, nowadays had the kind of personal following Joshua Bell enjoys. Maybe there’s hope for classical music yet!)<\/p>\n
My free seat was right up by the organ pipes, with an overhead view of the orchestra. It was slightly odd acoustically, as the sound was being projected away from you and it all sounded rather far away (because it was rather far away).<\/p>\n
I don’t listen enough to Classic FM to have got tired of Bruch’s first violin concerto; this particular performance erred on the side of being severe rather than sickly, which is how I’d want it. But I was really there for the Shostakovich, his tenth symphony.<\/p>\n
I don’t think I’d ever heard one of his symphonies live in the concert hall before. I was glad of my bird’s eye view of the orchestra as the themes were transformed by being passed around from section to section. The only instrument I couldn’t see easily was that vital one, the xylophone. I maintain that when the xylophone comes in, you can tell that a Shostakovich symphony is getting really serious; though actually it isn’t used much in no. 10. One can play the game of finding extra-musical significance almost endlessly with these symphonies; but as a reprise of the brutal music from the scherzo was stomped on by a fortissimo DSCH, it was hard not to sense relief and triumph that the composer had outlived Stalin. For further comments on the performance, I refer the reader to the Guardian<\/i>‘s review<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I only just made it to the Royal Albert Hall (the RPO and Daniele Gatti) in time thanks to a delayed train. Having arrived after the concert had sold out, I was prepared to be disappointed and had a reserve … Continue reading