Shostakovich’s shattering Eighth Symphony is the climax of a gripping all-Russian programme from BBC Symphony Orchestra guest conductor Hannu Lintu and viola phenom Timothy Ridout.
Hannu Lintu, conductor
Timothy Ridout, viola
BBC Symphony Orchestra
It’s a bitter irony, but bad politics sometimes produce great art. Shostakovich wrote his Eighth Symphony at the height of the Second World War, and every bar of this colossal work resounds with violent struggle. Schnittke’s Viola Concerto was born in the dying days of the Soviet Union: a voice of sorrow, mischief and subversion beneath the grey skies of the Cold War.
These two masterpieces are two pages of the same twentieth century story – dissident masters, speaking truth to power in a time when the wrong notes (like the wrong opinions) carried a brutal price. Together, they add up to a formidable programme from guest conductor Hannu Lintu, with the “terrifically talented” (The Times) Timothy Ridout bringing both poetry and passion to Schnittke’s remarkable concerto.
Barbican Centre, Silk Street, City of London, EC2Y 8DS England, United Kingdom
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