Making unusual connections is one of the hallmarks of the BBC Proms. Honouring Sofia Gubaidulina, who died aged 93 in March, this concert opened with the sound of soft tubular bells for the UK premiere of an early composition, Revue Music for Symphony Orchestra and Jazz Band. They returned to signal the end of the piece, giving tantalising pre-echoes of what was to follow later in the evening. Gubaidulina’s light theatrical entertainment displays signs of her early work for the celluloid screen as well as her iconoclastic love of experiment. There was plenty of brash revelry in the jazz band elements, acting as a concertante group, replete with lead trumpet, saxophones and tomtoms, which is set against the ripieno of the larger symphony orchestra, mirroring the earlier Baroque tradition of a concerto grosso. Gubaidulina throws a lot into this mix, which unlike her later preoccupation with sacred-inspired music, doesn’t quite have overall coherence. This is because of the density of the writing with heavy overlapping of textures, lacking the clarity of so much Baroque music. There is unquestionably a strong sense of physicality present in in the final blaze of sound, in which the Royal Albert Hall organ more than held its own. Whether the use of three amplified vocal soloists, members of Synergy Vocals, and a speaker whose opening words were “What a night!”, adds to or subtracts from the overall effect is a moot point.
An Eastern polarity (and Gubaidulina’s origins were Tatar) gave way to French elegance for Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G major. This piece can be played as an outpouring of effervescence dotted with splashes of vibrant colour or in a more controlled manner, savouring all the subtleties and inflections of the jazz-inspired syncopations. Benjamin Grosvenor chose the latter, underlining the fastidious craftsmanship of the writing. It was a very fine rendition too, with two characteristics very much to the fore: Grosvenor’s evenness of line and his crystalline tone. Throughout, Bancroft ensured a sensitive dovetailing of the orchestral accompaniment with the solo displays. At the start of the second movement, Adagio assai, Grosvenor found a warm sense of intimacy which recalled the words of the work’s dedicatee, Marguerite Long: “One of the most touching melodies which has come from the human heart.” The Finale bubbled along like the proverbial simmering pot, light and feathery, always alive to its capricious impulses. Grosvenor’s virtuosic power shone through his encore, the concluding movement of Prokofiev’s Seventh Piano Sonata.
Should some works of music come with health warnings? Television viewers are routinely advised in advance about images of a distressing nature. However, what we might see is deemed to be more dangerous than what we might hear. Does this mean that concert audiences are a more resilient bunch? Truth to tell, it is virtually impossible to attend a performance of Shostakovich’s Babi Yar Symphony and not feel cut to the core. This work with all its low-lying sonorities and sombre colours is grief-stricken and grief-laden. The events that took place in a lonely ravine not far from the Ukrainian capital Kyiv in September 1941 reveal not only the inhumanity of human beings but also their complicity in committing acts of sheer evil. The world has seen many killing fields, but few leave such a barbaric memory as this concerted attempt to eradicate all Jewish existence in one area of the planet.
Babi Yar is not Shostakovich’s only choral symphony, but it is certainly one of the most powerful of all his symphonic statements. But the music would have much less of a visceral impact without the words of the Russian poet Yevgeny Yevtuschenko. He encountered considerable opposition from the Soviet authorities, cognisant of Stalin’s warning, “Do not divide the dead!”, who exercised pressure on the poet to generalise the killing and undertook several attempts to thwart the work’s premiere in 1962. Though the opening poem about Babi Yar creates the most devastating of feelings, the other four poems by Yevtuschenko which Shostakovich set to music explore the darkness at the heart of every dictatorship, none more so than the fourth, Strakhi (Fears), that speaks of anonymous denunciations, a nocturnal knock at the door, and the corrosive and paralysing effects of coercive state control. There are few signs of levity anywhere, confined mostly to the second poem, Yumor (Humour), detailing a belief in the power of the buffoon to make tyrants tremble.
So much depends in a successful performance on the sustained emotional weight of the male chorus, here made up of the lower voices of the BBC National Chorus of Wales. These 90 odd singers, magnificently prepared by the language coach Arina Mkrtchian and their Artistic Director, Adrian Partington, were unflagging until the very end, delivering exactly the kind of Slavic fervour the work demands. Their fortissimo unison cries, such as the one that ends the first movement, “I patomu ya nastoyashchiy russkiy” (and that is why I am a true Russian), delivered repeated blows to the solar plexus; the clarity of their articulation even in soft, almost whispered lines, was highly commendable.
Sharing the task of delivering Yevtuschenko’s eloquent poetry was the Lithuanian bass-baritone Kostas Smoriginas. I have heard more powerful and chilling bass voices, but the graininess of Smoriginas’s vocal instrument reinforced the stark messages in the text. What I was less happy about was his lack of engagement with the audience, surprising for somebody with his operatic experience. His eyes were focused almost relentlessly on the score in front of him, with just occasional sideways glances to the conductor, and little in the way of body language.
Shostakovich once commented that “the majority of my symphonies are tombstones”. That is certainly true of the Thirteenth, with the sounds of an icy wind blowing through a desolate graveyard at the start, chasms of bleak and unremitting horror opening up in the ground beneath. I have previously heard Bancroft do full justice to large and complex scores, where control of the overall structure but also attention to key orchestral detail are essential. This was a performance in which he scarcely put a foot wrong, peeling back the layers of bandages to reveal the suppurating wounds beneath. The pain was there for all to see and hear. Many details stood out in the excellent playing of the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, responding with commitment to Bancroft’s direction: the woodwind chattering like aggressive magpies in the first movement, a simple tapping rhythm of castanets and woodblock in the second, the cavernous voice of a deep tuba in the fourth, the many notes of sledgehammer savagery from the brass, and the celestial character to the flute duet that opens the Finale. Above all, the tubular bells, replicating one of the traditional funeral rites, provided an important thematic thread to the hour-long performance, calling to mind the words of one of John Donne’s Meditations: “For whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee.”
The death of Shostakovich on 9 August 1975 robbed the world of the greatest symphonic voice, both with and without choral embellishments, of the 20th century. So far, fifty years on from that point in time and now well into the 21st century, there is nobody who comes close to matching his achievement. Is the symphony perhaps a dying musical form? That, one might say, is a question for another day.
Alexander Hall
Benjamin Grosvenor Plays Ravel (BBC Proms 2025)
Gubaidulina – Revue Music for Symphony Orchestra and Jazz Band (UK premiere); Ravel – Piano Concerto in G major; Shostakovich – Symphony No. 13 in B flat minor (Babi Yar)
Benjamin Grosvenor (piano); Kostas Smoriginas (bass-baritone); BBC National Chorus of Wales (lower voices); Synergy Vocals; BBC National Orchestra of Wales; Ryan Bancroft (conductor)
Royal Albert Hall, London, 15 August 2025
All photos © Andy Paradise