Vladimir Jurowski’s programme for his latest London Philharmonic concert was a typically uncompromising one. In the broader context of the themes of home, belonging and exile that dominate the orchestra’s current season, he focused on the mid-20th century, specifically on works composed around the second world war. Hindemith’s Violin Concerto, written in 1939 after its composer fled Nazi Germany, was flanked by the dark, post-war uncertainties of Prokofiev’s Sixth Symphony (1946) and Galina Ustvolskaya’s Symphonic Poem No 1 (1958).
Ustvolskaya studied with Shostakovich, and her work, like his, was frequently propelled by a search for individualism and integrity amid Soviet proscriptions and orthodoxies. By 1958, she hadn’t quite found the abrasive personal voice that the authorities later deemed suspect, though Symphonic Poem No 1 at once parodies the fixities of official optimism and gazes back to the hieratic chants, bells and rituals of the Russian church. Jurowski’s performance, with its gathering tensions and bitter nostalgia, was a forceful reminder that we don’t hear her music as often as we should.
