RPO/Petrenko review – a blistering, multi-hued Shostakovich

Royal Festival Hall, LondonConductor Vasily Petrenko didn’t put a foot wrong in this Multitudes festival performance of the Leningrad Symphony, the drama enhanced by evocative video imagery by Kirill Serebrennikov and Ilya ShagalovSouthbank Centre’s life-enhancing Multitudes festival is turning out to be a stimulating mix of orchestral fireworks and artistic cross-fertilisation. Of course, the trick with multidisciplinary work is to ensure that one form doesn’t overwhelm the others, and this Royal Philharmonic take on Shostakovich’s epic Leningrad Symphony, with imagery by Russian art/film director Kirill Serebrennikov and video artist Ilya Shagalov, got the balance just right.A brief first half offered a thrusting reading of Sibelius’s Finlandia, a more straightforwardly patriotic work than Shostakovich’s tantalisingly equivocal symphony. Conductor Vasily Petrenko proved a master of dramatic contrasts, from the opening rasp of low brass to the composer’s final proclamation of nationhood. Continue reading...

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