Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra/Kirill Karabits, Lighthouse, Poole ★★★★☆
In the context of the vast suffering of the war in Ukraine, the displacement to Poole in Dorset of the world premiere of a long-lost Ukrainian cello concerto, which should have taken place in war-torn Kharkiv, might seem very small beer. But it demonstrates how the struggle for Ukrainian survival is now being fought in the cultural sphere too, as Putin sets about destroying Ukrainian identity.
So, this premiere of a concerto composed exactly 100 years ago by little-known Ukrainian composer Feodor Akimenko didn’t feel at all small. It felt like a triumph, for the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra and the cellist Victor Julien-Laferrière who performed it, and above all the orchestra’s Ukrainian Chief Conductor Kirill Karabits, who rescued the piece from oblivion.
Karabits is on mission to unearth forgotten music by Ukrainian, Russian and other eastern-European composers, and recently discovered Akimenko’s piece slumbering in a Parisian library. Wednesday night’s performance of the concerto was the first ever, and two of the violinists who were due to perform in the Kharkiv premiere travelled all the way to Poole to join the BSO.
It was a shrewd move to preface Akimenko’s concerto with the brilliant bouquet of orchestral fireworks that is Stravinsky’s Scherzo Fantastique. Stravinsky was briefly a composition student of Akimenko’s, and though the older man’s concerto had none of the younger man’s brilliance, there was certainly a family resemblance between the pieces.
There was a similar feeling of exotic magic in the harmony, and in the slow lyrical passages you could detect a distinctly Wagnerian sultriness. But Akimenko’s piece was much more solid and serious, and the Wagnerian element much more prominent. Julien-Laferrière’s performance of the very virtuoso part was beyond praise, and he and the orchestra and Karabits brought out the special flavour of the concerto, poised intriguingly between Germanic romanticism and Russian exoticism. We must hope this team play the piece again soon, before the memory of that flavour fades.
After the interval, the orchestra (still with the Ukrainian violinists) gave a performance of Mahler’s Fifth Symphony that traced the journey from funereal blackness to joy and sunlight with total conviction (all praise to horn player Alexander Wide, stentorian and subtle by turns). But though it was the uproarious ending of Mahler’s symphony that brought everyone to their feet, it was the experience of that subtle, moving concerto and all it symbolised of defiance and survival that made the evening special. IH
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