Mind-boggling brilliance from combined orchestras

If there was one concert in this year’s festival that immediately caught my eye it was the one including Shostakovich’s 4th symphony.

Something of a rarity in any case, the fact that it was to be performed by an amalgamation of the Mariinsky Orchestra and the RSNO made it even more appealing.

This hybrid resulted in a quite spectacular emotionally-charged performance, but not before each orchestra had a chance to shine on their own.

Bias apart, I felt that of the two individual performances the RSNO won hands down, due to the direction of conductor Valery Gergiev in Prokofiev’s “Classical” symphony.

He fairly belted his way through it and with the Mariinsky paired down to chamber orchestra size, they never really realised their true potential. Yes, the pseudo classical idioms were there but it seemed to be over in a flash. It’s not a long work but it could have been given more care and attention.

The strings of the RSNO were in peerless form in Britten’s Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge. Perhaps the composer gives the players more scope for variety and colour, but the contrasts between movements were marked and Gergiev seemed more inclined to let the music dictate things, not the other way round.

As for the Shostakovich, this was just over an hour of pulsating, mind-boggling brilliance on the part of the combined orchestras, with Gergiev leading the way in competent marvellousinterpretative terms.

I doubt if anything else gives such variety in mood, tempo, colour and texture. Shostakovich flits from one to the other at the drop of a hat, from crashing brass to soft strings and cheeky woodwind passages. Solos from every part of the orchestra are dotted about, all performed with world-class precision.

I’ve witnessed some great musical combinations, but the fusion of both orchestras and this wonderful, gargantuan symphony is certainly the most potent.