The main work in this Aurora Orchestra concert was Shostakovich’s 14th Symphony, dating from 1969, and written while its composer was seriously ill in hospital with both polio and a heart condition. Part symphony, part song cycle, for soprano and bass soloists, strings and percussion, it forms a bitter meditation on mortality that sets texts by four writers who themselves died young in violent or unjust circumstances. Shostakovich thought it his greatest score. It’s uncompromising stuff, uncomfortable to listen to.
Approaches inevitably differ as to how to treat it, with some interpreters (Gianandrea Noseda, for instance, with the LSO, at the Barbican earlier this year) primarily suggesting bleak, world-weary exhaustion. Nicholas Collon, in contrast, sounded notably angry in a performance that often raged at the dying of the light. Mordant humour pervaded the tavern where death dances the Malagueña with the drinkers, and time literally seemed to run out in the frantic duet for the desperate Lorelei and the Bishop who desires her.
