Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony

City Halls, Glasgow 8/5/25

BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Gemma New conductor, Rosanne Philippens violin

 “Imagine … a pulse-raising struggle between love and despair” – the tagline of the penultimate concert of the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra’s Thursday night season in Glasgow’s City Halls, conducted by New Zealander Gemma New.  It referred principally to Tchaikovsky’s emotionally charged Fifth Symphony.  As I refuse to see this masterpiece as any kind of expression of triumph, yet adore every minute of its conflicted struggle against encroaching self-doubt, I approve of the revised tagline over the original advertised one: “a journey from darkness to light”.  Semi-autobiographical struggles for self-realisation also featured in the other two works on the programme.  Lera Auerbach’s 2011 symphonic poem ‘Icarus’ deals with the contradictions between human ambition and ingenuity versus the limitations imposed by the real physical world.  Shostakovich’s First Violin Concerto dramatises the resilience and rebelliousness of the human spirit, eventually triumphing over the forces that would crush it.  As usual with the Thursday night series, the concert was introduced by Kate Molleson and broadcast live over Radio 3 in Concert.  To fit into the broadcast time slot (and, as far as I know, for the first time ever), the interval was shortened to 15 minutes.  Attendance was satisfactory.  Leader of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and the London Sinfonietta, Clio Gould, was guest leader for the evening.

I first heard ‘Icarus’ in early December 2023, performed by the RSNO under Thomas Søndergård.  On that occasion, the programme notes made clear the autobiographical element.  In 2005, the 31-year-old composer had worked on a large-scale commission, burning the midnight oil for months.  The premiere was a triumph.  The next day she was hospitalised with exhaustion.  Her 2007 Symphony No.1 ‘Chimera’ in 7 movements dealt with the emotional and mental trauma of that experience.  The last two movements of the symphony, which are performed attacca as the tone poem ‘Icarus’, were what we heard.  In the symphony they are subtitled ‘Humum mandere’ (to bite the dust) and ‘Requiem for Icarus’.  Our BBC programme notes by the composer made no reference to the autobiographical element but did remind us of the tragedy of downfall precipitated by overreaching.  Instead, Lera asked us to experience it as pure music.  And it was great to hear this extraordinary music in a fresh interpretation.  Rhythmic timpani and slap basses launched and concluded the pursuit music of the first movement with great melodic writing for piano, celeste, harps and flute.  A spooky central section with violin and flute solos over pizzicato strings was wonderfully atmospheric.  The longer second movement was elegiacally anguished at first, giving way to spooky singing from theremin, flute, cello and violin.  After a reprise of the timpani and slap basses, the mood softened to a ghostly but peaceful elegy with touchingly beautiful writing for theremin, piccolo, vibraphone and tubular bells over pianissimo strings with another beautiful violin solo from Clio Gould.  A super piece, sensitively performed and a great concert-opener.  To my personal taste, it received an even more sympathetic reading from Gemma New than from Søndergård with the RSNO.  Her lithe, sinuous, quasi-balletic yet rhythmically precise movements seem to draw the richest expressiveness from the players, a visual manifestation of strong artistic rapport. 

I last saw Gemma conducting the BBCSSO live in March of last year, in a programme that included Geneva Lewis as soloist in my third favourite 20th century violin concerto, the Barber.  Thus it was especially wonderful to see her conduct my favourite, the first of Shostakovich’s two for the instrument. (If anyone is interested, the Sibelius and the Elgar hold an obviously very subjective joint second place).  I got to know the Shostakovich through the Leonid Kogan Melodiya/HMV recording with the Moscow Phil under Kondrashin, a 1970 LP in my father’s collection (with which recently I have been reunited).  From the opening bars of the spectral pensive Nocturne, Gemma, Rosanne and the BBCSSO painted a picture of a solitary careworn figure traversing a bleak landscape, with unlikely moments of empathic solace between the soloist and the bassoons and contrabassoon, and glimmers of tenderness in exchanges with the celesta and harp.  It was not only Bartók that could write ghostly ‘night music’.  The riotous and seemingly vodka-fuelled Scherzo released the tension in a demonic totentanz with elements of klezmer, a wild double fugue incorporating the DSCH motif, and a faux forced jollity that Shostakovich was so expert at depicting.  Thrilling, even if it recalled the composer’s assertion that the purpose of art was more destructive than creative: “Art destroys silence”.  By “silence” he meant, of course, complicity in injustice.  He abhorred Soviet anti-semitism.  Grim oppression asserted itself from the horns at the beginning of the Passacaglia.  The soloist and different sections of the orchestra intone achingly beautiful pleading counter-melodies to the repeated passacaglia figure as it too travels across the stave.  As the music tails off after the climax where the solo violin itself chants the passacaglia theme, the violin seems to sob, balefully repeating fragments as a timpani roll also tails off.  In the cadenza (which is almost a movement in its own right), a transformation occurs.  The violin appears to examine fragments of themes from the early movements, initially desultorily, but with increasing confidence and, nore importantly defiance.  The pace quickens, the pain of the Passacaglia is forgotten as the violin breaks into a trot, then a gallop and the Burlesque finale is launched.  This is an unabashed knees-up of spontaneous merriment, nothing forced about it.  Xylophone and horn threaten to return to the Passacaglia, but the violin will not allow the mood to be derailed.  In the wild coda, even the horns whoop with glee.  Rosanne’s playing drew the listener into an intense shared experience, while her ‘Barrère’ Stradivari instrument communicated a revelatory and emotionally-charged reading of the 20th-century masterpiece, prompting a thunderous ovation from the Glasgow audience. 

Gemma New’s ‘shaping of a romantic narrative’ credentials having been well and truly registered with Glasgow audiences lat March with a radiant performance of Brahms 4, expectations of similar with Tchaikovsky 5’s unbridled romanticism were whetted.  It is understatement indeed to state they were not confounded.  Yann Ghiro’s clarinet set the predominant mood of brooding fatalism that haunts the first movement even as passions are roused.  We heard a reading that absolutely let the players be maximally expressive, but shaped every phrase with the awareness of where this journey is going, and it is not triumph.  There was exquisite clarity of detail from start to finish, fully exploiting the super acoustic of the City Halls.  The playing was phenomenal, with the famous slow movement horn solo from guest principal Olivia Gandee particularly touching, and some gloriously passionate string playing for the ‘love theme’, not without its share of heartache and cruelly interrupted by Fate.  The third movement’s waltz tempo was elegant, the rubato naturally expressive and unforced, the cantabile string melody sweetly contrasted with their agile balletic scurrying in the central section.  But a spectral appearance of the Fate motif shuts down the mood of insouciance, then presides over the introduction to the finale.  Stormy passion alternates with rueful introspection in a relentless drive.  Gemma kept it real and compelling, and ultimately satisfying, not as triumph but as catharsis, even as the trumpets and the orchestral barrel-organ amplify the self-mockery in the return of the first movement’s opening theme  Four concluding hammer-blows could be anything, but are probably the last nail in the coffin.  Superb.