Lost in the mist: BBC SO plays music by Fagerlund, Alma Mahler and Shostakovich
Music by Fagerlund, Alma Mahler and Shostakovich
Jukka-Pekka Saraste, Karen Cargill and BBC Symphony Orchestra
Barbican Hall
Stalls L76, £12
24 January 2020
Barbican page
Programme
Sebastian Fagerlund, Water Atlas
Alma Mahler, Lieder
Shostakovich, Eighth Symphony
Sadly for me this concert did not leave much of an impression and I struggle to remember more than a vague feeling that the Fagerlund was fine, the Mahler fine and the Shostakovich more than fine.
I retain least of the Fagerlund, beyond a sense of expansive, considered orchestral writing, tastefully deployed and short enough not to outstay its welcome but neither, apparently, long enough to convey its character. I had higher expectations for the Mahler but again gathered nothing beyond it being pretty enough and decently performed by Cargill and the BBC SO but with nothing to quicken the pulse or even distinctive enough for me to be able to recognise it should I hear it again.
Even the Shostakovich is misty, which suggests either there was something wrong with my attention that evening or there was something particularly unmemorable about Saraste’s directorship – although that in itself, I would have thought, should be memorable. Anyway, as it is my main sensation during the Shostakovich was one of relief: here is music that definitely means something and definitely says something and is of a different breed from the wishy-washy expanses of sound enjoyed in the Mahler and Fagerlund. More than that, I cannot say.
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