In German there is only one word (Schicksal) to cover the twin ideas of Providence watching over you in pursuit of higher things (destiny) and the workings of malign supernatural intervention (fate). For that reason, Brahms’s Schicksalslied or Song of Destiny contains in its title an element of ambiguity. Is the essential message one of optimism or pessimism or, like the head of Janus, does it face both ways? The composer set his short choral piece (Is it a secular cantata or a dramatic choral overture?) to a poem by one of the key figures of German Romanticism, Friedrich Hölderlin, whose own existence from the cradle to the grave was marred by grief and sorrow, compounded by a later diagnosis of schizophrenia. Hölderlin’s text focuses in the first two stanzas on the blissful eternal life of the gods, contrasted in the final stanza with the grim reality of the limited and troubled existence of humankind.
Fusing these two opposites proved difficult for Brahms. He started on the work in 1869 but laid it aside for the Alto Rhapsody, and only returned to it two years later after resolving to give its conclusion the kind of consolatory tone which characterises his German Requiem. This explains the tonal shifts from E flat major through the turbulent C minor of the central section to the radiance of the C major postlude.
Gianandrea Noseda, dispensing with a baton, shaped a warm and flowing account of the Schicksalslied, with the hundred or so choristers of the London Symphony Chorus keyed in to the serenity of the first two stanzas and producing a soft stillness for “blicken in stiller, ewiger Klarheit” before the drama that underpins the final stanza. Here, in an outburst of passionate anguish, the final stanza erupted for “Doch uns ist gegeben, auf keiner Stätte zu ruh’n“, with chorus and orchestra relishing the stormy turbulence, before an eloquent flute solo returned matters to a lofty sense of repose at the close.
Ambiguity was a defining element in the life and work of Shostakovich. Yet after the teeming vitality and inventiveness of his First Symphony, a graduation piece at the Leningrad Conservatory, the new Soviet regime seems to have swallowed him alive for the next step in his development. What was later to become his Second Symphony was in fact conceived as a celebratory piece in honour of the 10th anniversary of the October Revolution and entitled “To October, a Symphonic Dedication”. It was only after Shostakovich produced his next symphonic endeavour two years subsequently that Number Two assumed its place in the chronology. Both these works have been decried in certain quarters as being little more than agitprop symphonies, given over to restless “modernist” experimentation, and the composer himself later referred to them as “erroneous striving after originality”.
That seems a little unfair. If one leaves aside the rather brash patriotic fervour in the concluding movement of Symphony No 2, it is striking how far the weight of musical tradition is already evident in what Shostakovich does in this short work. There are polychromatic rumblings at the start, emerging seemingly out of a void, not vastly different from “The Representation of Chaos” in Haydn’s The Creation, and a bass line which resembles the opening of Stravinsky’s The Firebird, leading to low growls from the brass together with flecks of orchestral colour which owe much to Rimsky-Korsakov. When in the fourth movement the chorus makes its first entrance and sings, in Aleksandr Bezymensky’s text, of its torment, “our hearts gripped in the vice of anguish”, it is extraordinarily redolent of the people’s helplessness in Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov.
This was the point when I had serious doubts about the quality of the choral sound. Not only was it too bright and breezy for the saturnine elements of the text at the start, it lacked a Slavic rasp, a sensation of the proletariat throwing off the chains of repression. In short, it was too cultivated, too civilised. By contrast, the LSO offered sharpness of articulation matched with furious energy from strings and percussion, a woodwind choir that sliced through the textures and provided pointed contrasts with Roman Simovic’s lyrical solos. But where was the factory whistle or siren that was supposed to usher in the first lines of the chorus? With gleaming, piercing trumpets and a cavernous tuba solo there is already in this symphony evidence of Shostakovich’s love of sonority and unusual texture.
Recently, Mieczysław Weinberg has received a lot of attention; Shostakovich’s other near contemporary and disciple, Alfred Schnittke, much less. So it was good to hear his Violin Concerto No 1, the first of four he wrote specifically for this instrument, especially when played by an outstanding soloist like Lisa Batiashvili. Originally cast in four movements, soloist and conductor agreed to exclude the second movement, citing the composer’s “revised wishes” and Gidon Kremer’s recording, though in the version with Mark Lubotsky it is retained. This was a shame: the menacing, diabolical nature of this short movement marked Presto reveals an element in his musical thinking that takes him close to Mahler’s eruptive qualities.
The composer himself stated that this concerto contained “a tiny breath of what was to come later”, hinting at his characteristic polystylism. There is a searching restlessness, a mixture of agitation alternating with composure, which requires the utmost concentration from the soloist if the narrative line is not to falter. Batiashvili demonstrated her complete command of the score, her rich, aristocratic tone giving the angularity of the writing an added allure. During the first movement it was often like standing at the edge of a blast furnace, witnessing the pent-up release of teeming energy, the hammer blows from both soloist and orchestra pre-echoing the factory world in the symphony to follow. In the Andante movement there were exquisite moments of tender beauty, often involving the vast array of keyboard percussion, when the solo violin soared free of all earthly restraint. The concluding Allegro scherzando provided evidence of the influence of Bartók and Stravinsky, but I was equally struck by the unusual sonorities, such as a powerful snarl from cellos and double basses to accompany the soloist. In his very alert accompaniment Noseda followed Batiashvili’s every note.
Critics have a habit of trying to find connections between composers. What Shostakovich and Schnittke had in common was the fact that they both wrote film scores, Schnittke no fewer than 66 of them. Their early music therefore often has an impressionistic quality. Had he been born much later, would Brahms have been tempted by this medium? Who knows. Yet all three composers represented in this programme would certainly have understood the significance of ambiguity. No doubt about that.
Alexander Hall
Schnittke – Violin Concerto No 1; Shostakovich – Symphony No 2 in B major, Op. 14; Brahms – Schicksalslied, Op. 54
Lisa Batiashvili (violin); London Symphony Chorus, Chorus Director Mariana Rosas; London Symphony Orchestra, Conductor Gianandrea Noseda
Barbican Centre, London, 13 April 2025
All photos © Mark Allan