2023 04 29-30 Ragged Music Festival ENG - Website

Programme notes
An artist drawing from a dwindling source is a late harvester - sometimes the fruit is
overripe, sometimes just dry. A late work can be complex, confusing, or excessive - or on
the contrary, be simplistic and predictable. More often than not, it is recognisable by its
somewhat jeopardised flow of life energy that we intuitively register.
In stricter terms it is very rarely ‘the best’
work, though it can be unusual, curious,
touching, humbling, even perplexing. But it
takes a great artist to take control of this
changing balance and seize the opportunity
to achieve something that couldn’t be done
at the peak of their creative energy; to
explore those areas that don’t respond to
lively strength, yet yield to feeble, uncertain
touch.
Secretive and quirky
There is no question that Shostakovich’s
last works are of that kind. Like a man
reduced by a terrible disease who suddenly
discovers he can now pass through narrow
secret passages, Shostakovich seems
to use the withering of creative power
to wander in different artistic territory.
Perhaps, the 15th Symphony is the pinnacle
of this expedition, a relatively restrained,
paired down work that is both immensely
personal and radically imaginative under
its surface. Secretive and quirky, it feels
even more intense and concentrated in
this astonishing arrangement by Viktor
Derevianko that was approved by the
composer himself. Inlaid with numerous
quotations from Wagner, Rachmaninov,
Rossini and Glinka as well as Shostakovich’s
own earlier works, it is an unexplained
labyrinth that probes the limits of musical
language.
So what does it all mean? It seems this
question is the very essence of what
Shostakovich himself called ‘a wicked
symphony’. An unhinged exploration of
meaning and meaninglessness, it starts with
an unsettling image of a ‘toyshop coming to
life’. It is full of gripping, wide-eyed magic
but while a listener is constantly kept on
the verge of finally discovering something
of ultimate importance, of figuring it out,
the mystery persists. Instead of a solution
or the final piece of the puzzle, all one is
offered is another image, as mesmerising
as it is disturbing. The symphony ends with
a gentle solo of percussions imitating the
clinking and jingling of medical devices in
a hospital ward. This terrifying and poetic
music that lasts mere moments is so
unforgettable that one wants to rewind time
to hear it again. Yet it is gone, and there is
no answer. Or is the answer in the silence
that lies beyond?
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