Kirill Karabits’s years with the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra have regularly championed music from eastern Europe, including Karabits’native Ukraine. This year’s BSO Proms visit was no exception, opening with a celebration of Kyiv written by Karabits’ late father Ivan. But it was a Russian, Sergei Rachmaninov, whose music emphatically defined this concert in the end.
Ivan Karabits’s single movement First Concerto for orchestra was composed in 1980-1, to mark the 1,500th anniversary of Kyiv. It is a professional piece of scoring, moving deftly from episode to episode. It begins in declamatory mode, like a lot of Soviet-era music, but its most effective writing was more reflective, a lingering flute solo against soft cello accompaniment, and the fragmentary celesta of its final bars, one of several echoes of Shostakovich’s influence.
Mozart’s Fourth Horn Concerto followed, performed with zesty panache by Felix Klieser, a soloist born without arms, who controls the valves with his toes, his instrument mounted in front of him on a tripod. Tidily supported by Karabits and the orchestra, Klieser played the first two movements stylishly and tastefully. In the famous rondo, though, a switch seemed to be flicked. His playing became more spontaneous and even acquired an occasional hunting horn earthiness. Another perky Mozart horn rondo, this time from the Second Concerto, was an ideal encore.
Rachmaninov’s Second Symphony was given a genuinely memorable performance, compellingly handled by Karabits from first to last, and matched by the quality of the BSO playing. Overall, this was often a daringly slow interpretation of an already long score, played without cuts. Yet Karabits never allowed the tension to falter or the care over detail to slip. Woodwinds and strings combined to particularly fine effect in the adagio, and the symphony’s interconnections were more persuasively expounded than in any other performance in my experience.
Available on BBC Sounds until 9 October. The BBC Proms continue until 9 September
