That Shostakovich concert, performed by the Mahler Youth Orchestra under Teodor Currentzis, is as traditional as this year’s Oberthur Spirituel, with the exception of Handel’s Messiah, conducted by Jordi Saval. It was a target. And he at his Kollegienkirche with less than 400 seats.
Nicknamed “Babi Yar” in the setting of a poem about remembering the massacre of more than 30,000 Jews at Ukrainian sites on the opening night of the Ouverture Spirituelle, the war there It may have looked like the reaction of Early in the invasion, Russian missiles hit the area around the Babin Yar Holocaust Memorial Center. But in an eerily prescient move, it was programmed last year.
Additionally, the program was directed by Currentzis, who, along with his ensemble MusicAeterna, is under scrutiny for ties to the Russian state. (On Tuesday, he announced the formation of a new group, Utopia, with Western backing. Not to mention that the news release referred to him as Greek instead of Greek-Russian, as he identified himself. and is a vehicle for the future of MusicAeterna, which was not mentioned in this development.)
But at the “Babi Yar” concert, the audience’s focus seemed to be on the performance itself, given the ecstatic response to the orchestra and Currentzis, not to mention the members of the MusicAeterna Choir and Bach Salzburg. . Soloist Dmitry Ulyanov, who had a characteristic, sonorous bass, could be used to make the instrumentalist stand at an emotional climax (a gesture that distrusts the music), or to constantly raise his arms and keep them in current currentzis. There were good reasons to allow indulgence by Hall hushed at the end of a symphony (a gesture of distrust of the listener).
The night soon took a more adventurous turn at Kollegienkirche, where Cantando Admont and members of Klangforum Wien performed two harrowing and poignant events by Luigi Nono inspired by the horrors in Poland during World War II. Presented a work (“Ricorda cosa ti hanno fatti”). At Auschwitz”), the other was due to repressive Soviet rule (“Quando stanno morendo. Diario polacco n. 2”).
