London seems awash with Russian galas at present. Hard on the heels of the Kirov's two evenings at the Royal Opera House came a grand concert to celebrate the bicentenary of the St Petersburg Philharmonic - the orchestra that, more than any other, kept artistic integrity alive in the dark days of the USSR. Of late it has been regrettably sidelined as post-Soviet hype has focused on the Kirov and its workaholic music director Valery Gergiev. Gergiev's opposite number at the Philharmonic, Yuri Temirkanov, is his antithesis - a quiet, undemonstrative man who employs minimal gestures on the podium to obtain devastating results.
That the gala was a remarkable occasion perhaps was ultimately due more to accident than design. The last minute withdrawal of two soloists, violinist Maxim Vengerov and mezzo Olga Borodina, meant that the party pieces were dispatched before the interval, paving the way for a complete performance of Tchaikovsky's Fourth Symphony.
Even within the stop-start format of the first half, Temirkanov seemed keen to avoid the impression of musical sound bites, opening with Shostakovich's Festive Overture, poised somewhere between jazz and totalitarian kitsch, before turning in a brooding performance of a sizeable chunk of Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake. Some of the showy turns were extraneous. Yuri Bashmet, playing with a hefty vibrato and some sagging intonation, made Bruch's Romance for Viola and Orchestra sound like Elgar. Evgeny Kissin clattered through the opening movement of Tchaikovsky's First Piano Concerto with his usual combination of technical dexterity and non-existent emotion. Only baritone Dmitri Hvorostovsky managed to inject deep feeling into his extracts, first in Posa's death scene from Verdi's Don Carlos and then Yeletzky's aria from Tchaikovsky's The Queen of Spades.
The performance of Tchaikovsky's Fourth, however, was outstanding. Temirkanov plunged way beyond the usual morbid self-absorption towards epic breadth, without losing sight of the restlessness at the work's core. The Symphony progressed as a single emotional arc from the gaunt, spectral opening to the elation of the finale, taking in bitter nostalgia in the slow movement and profound unease in the ricocheting pizzicatos of the scherzo. The playing was beyond criticism. The St Petersburg Philharmonic is unmatched as an ensemble and remains, arguably, the greatest orchestra in the world.
