"Glory to Comrade Stalin," proclaim the banners inside the Royal Festival Hall for Vladimir Ashkenazy's celebration of the music of Prokofiev and Shostakovich. With red-tinted lighting, the effect in the hall is a kitschy recreation of Communist party propaganda.
This crass imagery finds its musical counterpart in the first half of Ashkenazy's programme with the Philharmonia Orchestra: Prokofiev's The Meeting of the Volga and the Don, and his oratorio, On Guard for Peace. Both were written to celebrate the Soviet leadership. The Meeting of the Volga and the Don commemorates Stalin's ruinous plan to join two great rivers. On Guard for Peace glorifies victory over the Germans at Stalingrad.
Prokofiev realises the meeting of the rivers with brash fanfares and fluid melodies. Ashkenazy sells it as best he can but it is an empty piece of party rhetoric in sound. The oratorio is Communist bravado on an even grander scale, with mezzo-soprano and alto soloists (here Lilli Paasikivi and James Leveson), chorus, and children's choir. Amid the sequence of noisy proclamations of peace and patriotism, a slow lullaby, set to one of Prokofiev's most moving melodies, imagines a mother singing to her child, and closes with these comforting words, sung by the mezzo and alto: "They are led by the children's best friend, and he lives in the Kremlin." It's a moment that encapsulates the contradictions of Prokofiev's music, as this simple and beautiful melody pays homage to Stalin's murderous regime.
Ashkenazy does not pretend that On Guard for Peace is anything other than Communist party politics. This coarse, populist piece raises difficult questions. Where does composition become political ideology? We are happy to revisit and reassess pieces that praise Stalin, but would we be as content to hear a concert of music composed for the Third Reich?
Shostakovich's music is probably the best answer we have to the vexed questions of music's relationship with politics. His First Violin Concerto receives a brilliant performance from Vadim Repin in the second half. He communicates the work's tragic energy with an intensity that grips from beginning to end.
