Balke Pouliot plays the Violin Concerto No1 of Shostakovich and the ADDA Orchestra under Josep Vicent triumphs with the First Symphony

The last time I heard the First Symphony of Dmitri Shostakovich in a concert hall was perhaps over fifty years ago. It is not that I have not been avoiding it. Broadcast on radio, a performance of the work is not at all rare, but I have not until now been in the right place at the right time to hear it in performance. Alicante’s ADDA Orchestra under their director Josep Vicent offered a performance of the work as part of the current season and coupled it with the Violin Concerto No. 1. So last night, we were to hear two works by Shostakovich, an acknowledged masterpiece alongside a graduation piece written by a nineteen-year-old.

I found it revealing how even the most familiar music can be transformed into something fresh and new in live performance. Though I have not heard the symphony recently in the concert hall, I have heard it broadcast repeatedly over the years. But in performance, the utter originality is breathtaking and the continual flow of the young composer’s ideas both surprises and frustrates. First appearing in the middle of the 1920s, this is music which seems not to be modernistic, nor neoclassical, nor atonal. Neither is it obviously Late Romantic. Stylistically, at least, it is quite original. There are dissonances certainly, but no matter how much Glazunov criticized the young Shostakovich for his excesses, we hear a work which, if anything, is rooted in Mahler, especially in its treatment of slower themes.

Faster sections illustrate just how focused the young man was, in that the themes have the feel of the mature composer and indeed could have been written at any time in his career. In much of Shostakovich’s music, these spiky themes are often cited as evidence of cynicism, but these particular spiky themes were written by a nineteen-year-old young man who clearly just thought that way. Programme notes on the evening stressed the fact that the first movement has a humorous flavour throughout. As the evening progressed, we had more evidence of the composer’s humour, but it seems that this quality was evident in his works from the start.

I can remember the programme notes which accompanied the performance I heard decades ago. It said that the inclusion of a piano “to fill out the harmonies” was a sign of the inexperience of the composer. I wonder if the same author would have written the same opinion about Symphony Nos. 5 and 7, both of which have piano parts. In fact, in this First Symphony, the piano part contributes in no uncertain way to the statement of themes, rather than filling out anything.

Overall, the symphony surprises with its multiplicity of ideas. This does lead to an overall lack of focus and it is, perhaps this lack of focus that gives away the youth of its writer. But you are only young once, and these ideas would later percolate through a lifetime of composition.

The First Violin Concerto is a masterpiece from Shostakovich’s maturity. Unusually, it has four movements, slow-fast-slow-fast and indeed, the first movement almost seems like a lento continuation of the First Symphony, so hard is it to pin down. The scherzo and the passacaglia that follow are more conventional, but beautiful. The finale is a romp, and the humorous composer gives free rein to celebrate, and provides an opportunity to “play your heart out”, which was gleefully taken up by the ADDA players. Everyone seem to be enjoying the release after the tension and brooding of the first movement. And it was in fact in that first movement that the evening suffered a minor flaw when, at least to my ear, the soloist and the orchestra momentarily diverged rhythmically. But it was only a moment in an otherwise perfect performance.

Blake Pouliot was the soloist and, apart from that passage in the first movement, both his playing, and his pace were superb. He was clearly enjoying the rhythmic drive that the ADDA Orchestra brought to the music. The ADDA audience was greatly appreciative of his efforts, to such an extent that he played two encores in very different musical styles. The first was his own arrangement of The Last Rose of Summer, whose folk song like melody rang out, but quietly and shrouded in gentle, subtle decoration. The second encore was the more conventional, the Gavotte en Rondeau from the JS Bach’s Violin Partita No. 3 in E Major. But the concerto and the two encores did provide a picture of Blake Puliot’s talent.

We also had two encores after the symphony, and these two orchestral encores showed off two other characteristics of the music of Shostakovich. The first was the Waltz No2. I have written before of this strange masterpiece, but it is worth saying again that this waltz with its hummable and memorable tune is in a minor key. So Shostakovich the enigma triumphs again, with a sad song appearing to be celebratory. Fascinating. Then we heard Shostakovich the comedian in the Galop from the Cheryomushky music. The ADDA Orchestra provided the vaudeville.