It’s 11 years since Aurora Orchestra first performed a symphony from memory at the BBC Proms. The irrepressibly energetic ensemble has been transfixing audiences with collective tightrope walks ever since. This year – 50 years since the composer’s death – Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony came in for the look-mum-no-music treatment.
To be clear, the memorisation element is a red herring, not in itself guaranteeing a satisfying performance. That depends on interpretation and rehearsal technique. What memorising a piece on the scale of Shostakovich’s monumental Fifth does mean, however, is that every musician knows the work inside out, in all its 3D complexity – and every musician (whether a rank-and-file violin or a woodwind principal) is equally exposed.
The result was a high-intensity, high-impact performance. The volume dropped from blistering climaxes to pianissimo whispers as if the musicians had hurtled off a cliff. The tone ranged from the rudely rustic (all biting strings and gritty dollops of brass) in the Scherzo to a single silken thread spun slowly into a finely shimmering fabric in the Largo. Conductor Nicholas Collon whipped tutti passages into a frenzy but left this orchestra of soloists to craft their own moments in the spotlight. The coordination was military-grade, the finale’s close a searing, passionate catharsis. The standing ovation felt inevitable.
But it was also inflected by the preceding “musical and dramatical exploration”, a collaboration with Frantic Assembly. Actor/dancer Max Revell was a silent, knock-kneed Shostakovich, prone to physical collapse as his Soviet credentials were scrutinised by a three-person committee. Collon introduced the Fifth Symphony (cue live musical extracts) as Shostakovich’s response to recent condemnation from Stalin himself: first arguing for the composer’s political rehabilitation, then suggesting a counter-reading.
Demonstrating in real time how musical meaning is flexible, always subjective, was virtuosic indeed and a final loosening of gravity’s grasp on the musicians themselves (upended by dancers as they played) was spectacular. But repressive regimes and artistic censorship are not historical curiosities – and sudden changes of state policy towards the arts are all too familiar. Poking fun at the committee’s arbitrary preferences and presenting Shostakovich as devoid of agency told its own disappointingly cosy story.
• At Usher Hall, Edinburgh, on 18 August. Listen again on BBC Sounds until 12 October. The Proms continue until 13 September
