Music speaks to every human condition – a truism, but like the best, sharp and pertinent. In the case of some composers, personal circumstances act as a patina on their work. It is hard to listen to Olivier Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time without recalling that it was written in a prisoner-of-war camp. So too with Dmitri Shostakovich. His ill-treatment at the hands of the Soviet regime permeates his compositions and his career. Last week the London Symphony Orchestra performed his Symphony No 13, “Babi Yar” (1962) at the Barbican, under the astute direction of Gianandrea Noseda. As principal guest conductor of the LSO, he is midway through recording a complete Shostakovich symphonies cycle with these players. Whether or not because he spent part of his career in Russia, Noseda understands this music to the core. In attack, in volume, in clarity, the musicians go with him to the edge of the precipice. This was a thrilling performance.
Almost banned at its premiere, the symphony deals with the slaughter, in Kyiv, of 34,000 Jews by Nazi Germans in September 1941. All mention of the massacre was taboo in the Soviet Union. Compelled by conscience, Shostakovich wanted to break that silence and address the issue of antisemitism. He set controversial texts by Yevgeny Yevtushenko: Babi Yar, and four other poems on aspects of daily Soviet life. The resulting work, for orchestra, bass soloist and male voice choir, is a choral cantata of immense, and intense, drama. Large forces packed the Barbican stage: additional low woodwind, four varieties of keyboard, two harps and 11 kinds of percussion, including the woodblocks that rattle and taps menacingly in the movement called In the Store. Soviet women, in shawls and scarves, silently queue for groceries: “There’s a smell of onions, cucumbers, a smell of ‘Kabul’ sauce.”
