Moving with Mozart and Exploding with Shastakovich

One could not have been plunged into two more different moods by the HKPO last night. In the first half of the concert, we had a classical piece, Mozart's Clarinet Concerto in A Major in Allegro, Adagio and Rondo:Allegro k 622 and in the second half Shastakovich's Symphony No. 11 in G minor Op. 103. The HKPO gave its all under the baton of Alexander Lazarev which according to the programme notes is "one of Russia's foremost conductors", having been the Chief Conductor and Artistic Director of the Bolshoi Theatre 1987-1995, Principal Guest Condctor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra 1992-1995 and Principal Conductor of the Royal Scottish National Orchestra 1997 to 2005 and since 2008, the Principal Conductor of the Japan Philharmonic Orchestra and also having conducted St. Petersburg Philharmonic, Berlin Philharmonic, Music Philharmonic, Royal Concertgebouw, Orchestra Filamonica della Scala, Oslo Philharmonic, Swedish Radio Symphony, NHK Symphony, Cleveland Orchestra and the London Philharmonic. Lazarev's profile is impressive. If we may judge from what he did with the HKPO, he did not acquire those positions for nothing.

 

Special mention must of course be made of our dearly beloved Principal Clarinetist of the HKPO, Andrew Simon, who has won numerous important prizes , been most highly praised by various conductors and music critics and given more than 60 solo performances with the HKPO. Previously I have heard him playing solos, but only as part of the HKPO during various symphony or chamber works by different composers. He has alway played flawlessly and has given us enormous enjoyment every time he played.  More importantly, he  always played sensitively to the needs of each piece. But last night, he stepped on to stage front as the soloist in Mozart's Clarinet Concerto.

 

As with his other works, Mozart's music has that special flow, delightful melodies first played on the high registers and then repeated in fifths or octaves lower down and then up again and then repeated on the lower registers again etc and always with its characteristic lilting rhythms. Mozart's Clarinet Concerto is one of the few concertos written for that instrument and to me, certainly the best. Originally the first movement was written for the basset horn with both joyful and melancholy sections. The second movement has a very very beautiful and wistful melody. I do not know if I misheard. Its opening melody sounded so much like Beethoven's Violin Concerto in D going up high, then endlessly developed and repeated in ternary or ABA form. The final movement has some passages which simply uses the entire register of the clarinet from the highest to the lowest.

 

It is not often that you can hear the clarinet being played at extremely low registers and simultaneously at extremely low volume, so low as to be just barely audible. And Andrew Simon did it so well that it just had to be the most beautiful low clarinet notes that I have ever heard. He played with such delicacy! I am so happy to be able to hear such good clarinet playing. If not for him, I shall never know in such intimate details how the clarinet could have sounded: so smooth, steady and almost translucent, never shrill, always sensitive to the most subtle changes of mood and how it can meander in such melancholy that it literally tears at your heart strings. Yet when played at higher registers , it can sound so positive. But no matter what, it never shouts, like the trumpet. It's such a gentlemanly instrument! I knew that Andrew Simon is good, but never knew that he is that good!

 

Once we were in the second half of the concert, the mood was completely transformed. Shastakovich's No. 11 opened so quietly as to be scarcely audible. It opened with the harp to the steady rhythms of the timpani beating equally softly. It principal theme is introduced by the trumpets first on a higher register and then immediately transposed and repeated in the lower register. Its motif is then pursued by the horn and then the flute, then the trombone. Then a few rattle of the military sounding snare drum announces the lead up to the start of the 1905 revolution. The principal theme kept being repeated by the other wind instruments, like the bassoon, oboes, flutes etc  and the music then builds up in intensity in both volume and the number of orchestral sections involved. The rhythms gets quicker, more rapid and then falls silent again, with only pizzacattos from the violas, the cellos and the doublebasses, which provide a steady rhythm for the fire and splendor of the trumpets, trombones, the horns, the bassoon, the clarinet, the flute. The sound of the drums mimicked the sound of the bullets and the canons so "realistically". From time to time, the music will go back to almost complete silence. Then the harp begins again, followed by the the brass and back to horns, the basson, the clarinet, the flute etc until in the the final climax in which the whole orchestra joins in with its snare drum, big drum, timpanis, oboes, piccolo, tuba, triangles, cymbals, xylophone, tubular bells, piano and strings. And what a spectular ending! The concert hall was literally turned into an ocean of sound with an extremely complex mix of melody, chords, clashes of cymbals, tubular bells, drums, timpani, the blare of the trumpets, trombones, tuba and string sound!

 

This symphony is truly one of a kind! It is certainly the most programmatic. It has been called a filmscore without a film! All its 4 movements : the Palace Square (Adagio), The 9th January (Allegro-Adagio, Allegro, Adagio), In Memoriam (Adagio) and The Tocsin (Allegro non troppo, Allegro, Moderato, Adagio and Allegro) were played continuously without any interruption! And Lazarev threw himself into the music so completely and moved his body so violently at times during his conducting  that I do not know how many times I actually feared that his spectacles, which he had to adjust every so often, might at any moment fall from his nose! I don't recall how many times Lazarev had to come out to acknowledge the audience's standing ovation. The applauses must have lasted more than 5 minutes!  I clapped until my hands were sore and yet each time he came out again, I simply had to clap again! How could I not? 

 

After the concert at the lobby downstairs I met a sister whom I see every Sunday at the Cathedral, whilst waiting for some of  my friends who went to relieve themselves at the loo. She could not have better described how I felt too. She said: " I never realize until after what I heard tonight how powerfully music can move!"