One of the world’s top orchestras, the Mariinsky from St
Petersburg, gave a concert performance in the Ulster Hall Belfast on 11 October.[i]
This was a special occasion for a variety of reasons.
Not least was the fact that this autumn, or November 7 to
be precise (using the Gregorian rather than the Julian calendar) marks the
centenary of the Russia’s October Revolution when rule by the Romanov dynasty
was violently ended and Lenin came to power.
So for Belfast to host the Mariinsky on the anniversary was a quite a
statement.
The orchestra responded with a magnificent all-Russian
programme.
They began with two
well-known pieces written by Tchaikovsky, the waltz and the Polonaise from Pushkin’s
Eugene Onegin. This was followed by a
less familiar but spell-binding piece, the Suite from The Tale of Tsar Saltan
by Rimsky-Korsakov.
But what really stole the show was Shostakovich’s epic 11th
Symphony. Written in 1957 to mark the
fortieth anniversary of the said October Revolution, this powerful music
commemorates the events that preceded the first Russian Revolution,
particularly the 1905 Bloody Sunday.
The
audience spontaneously rose to their feet to give the Orchestra the most
emphatic standing ovation that was almost as boisterous as the powerful
military might of the mesmerising music.
To finish the night – and perhaps to calm things down –
the musicians responded with a tranquil piece by Liadov called The Enchanted
Lake.
This was serene and evocative of
the pastoral mood so familiar from English composers. A second standing ovation was the natural
thing to do.
To have the Mariinsky in town is one thing; but to have
their maestro of maestros, Valery Gergiev as conductor completed what was an
honour.
I will never forget his last
visit to Northern Ireland. In June 1999,
after a Mariinsky performance in Belfast’s Grand Opera House, he brought the Mariinsky
Chorus to Omagh. Here they performed Rachmaninov’s
Vespers[ii] in the town’s Church of
the Sacred Heart.
This special event took place the year after the worst
atrocity of Northern Ireland’s Troubles when 32 people were killed in a car
bomb.
Subsequent to that explosion,
sporting teams came to Omagh; in football Manchester United and Chelsea played
friendly matches against Omagh Town and in rugby, Leicester Tigers spent a week
living in town as they began their pre-season training programme based at Omagh
Academicals RFC.
The appearance of the Chorus of the Mariinsky singing the
sacred Slavic music of the Russian Orthodox Church in the town’s majestic Roman
Catholic Church was richly symbolic and poignant.
It was also an almost supernatural experience, not least because it was
the first time I had heard basso profundo voices live. That singing style is an art form of the
highest order and uniquely Russian.
This
quotation from the composer makes the point about the fifth Vigil song, the
Song of Simeon:-
“Towards
the end, there is a passage sung by the basses – a scale descending to the
lowest B flat in a very slow pianissimo.
Danilin said – where on earth are we going to find such basses? They are as rare as asparagus at
Christmas. Of course he did find
them. I knew the voices of my countrymen
and well knew what demands I could make of Russian basses.”
I recall that despite it being a hot June day, the Mariinsky
Chorus sang Rachmaninov’s Vespers in perfect harmony for a couple of hours.
The then new First Minister David Trimble (a
recipient of a Nobel Peace Prize alongside John Hume in 1998) was sitting a
couple of pews behind me. And the BBC
recorded the event for posterity.
©Michael McSorley 2017
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