Southbank Centre’s life-enhancing Multitudes festival is turning out to be a stimulating mix of orchestral fireworks and artistic cross-fertilisation. Of course, the trick with multidisciplinary work is to ensure that one form doesn’t overwhelm the others, and this Royal Philharmonic take on Shostakovich’s epic Leningrad Symphony, with imagery by Russian art/film director Kirill Serebrennikov and video artist Ilya Shagalov, got the balance just right.
A brief first half offered a thrusting reading of Sibelius’s Finlandia, a more straightforwardly patriotic work than Shostakovich’s tantalisingly equivocal symphony. Conductor Vasily Petrenko proved a master of dramatic contrasts, from the opening rasp of low brass to the composer’s final proclamation of nationhood.
Kurt Weill’s Four Walt Whitman Songs were equally effective, thanks to Roderick Williams’ honest simplicity and razor-sharp diction. The German expat’s gawky settings of nationalistic poetry have the potential to get chopped up and tossed into word salads, but not with Williams at the helm. Firm-toned and equally firmly committed, he landed all four with musical panache and lyrical insight.
As for the symphony, Serebrennikov and Shagalov allowed Petrenko’s blistering, multi-hued interpretation of Shostakovich’s cinematic masterpiece to command centre stage. Their absorbing but never over-fussy illustrations offered extra-cerebral stimulation with evocative and occasionally provocative imagery playing out on three giant screens.
Shostakovich’s four movements were visualised as a series of discrete yet interconnected narratives, broadening the storyline from Soviet resilience in the face of the destruction of Leningrad (whether by Hitler or, as Shostakovich once suggested, by Stalin) to the impact of man’s technological overreach on the planet. The live-guided imagery, which referenced 20th-century constructivism and contemporary sci-fi, was inspired, from a psychedelically infused eyeball scanning the heavens to the blood-red vegetation of a haunted forest.
The opening Allegretto channelled the Icarus myth, the on-screen action going cheek-by-jowl with Petrenko’s masterly build of Shostakovich’s battle theme. In contrast, the light-footed second movement was accompanied by dancing cells and synapses. A poignant, post-apocalyptic Adagio led into an intense, emotional finale where Technicolor flowers blossomed as vividly as Shostakovich’s music. Petrenko, visibly moved at the end, never put a foot wrong.
• Multitudes, at London’s Southbank Centre, continues until 3 May.
