Review

I’ve always been a big fan of Aurora, though I haven’t always been the best-behaved fan. Their Beethoven 7 at Coal Drops Yard in the summer of 2020 was a wondrous experience — a precious gift in the midst of the ridiculous meanness of lockdown. Things changed a little the following summer when I attended their Stravinsky Rite at the Proms. I left during the first half, finding what seemed like unnecessarily condescending delivery infuriating. The interplay between presenter and conductor felt incredibly self-satisfied. It seemed to overshadow the brilliance of the music itself. Too much time had been spent on what was said, to the extent that I wasn’t prepared to sit through the remaining explainer to get to the music itself. It wasn’t my finest hour, truth be told. An unexpected meeting the following week attended by musicians who played in that concert confirmed I wasn’t the only one who felt the way I did.

Things have changed a bit.

The first half of the broadcast tonight demonstrates what is now a perfectly executed dramatised programme note format: imagined conversations between Soviet officials, composer and conductor that hint at what might have been said of Shostakovich’s most popular work. A Netflix-Crown lovechild, pregnant with delicious dramatic possibilities and peppered with musical illustrations that appeal to our imaginations, heightening the senses ahead of a full performance in the second half.

The meta-narrative lands well in a present-day discourse: a group of bureaucrats commanding their preferred narrative, subsequently played by the very person they’re seeking to control. The story of how Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony came to life appears to foreshadow events and culture today. This performance coinciding with the ridiculous circus of a summit that failed to achieve anything for an oppressed nation is something no one could have planned for.

Aurora’s biggest challenge is playing down the thing they’re most well-known for: performing from memory. Sceptics still see the playing from memory thing as a gimmick that overshadows the art; others see true innovation. But that innovation only works if the storytelling is delivered with integrity. In this production, Aurora have confounded the doubters. By scripting the narrative, expanding the cast and directing them more rigorously, they’ve stripped away the self-congratulatory air and the ego. What’s left is something rare: classical music that informs, educates and entertains. They understand the grammar of broadcast and have built a format around it. They are to the BBC the ideal and much-needed independent production house — outsourced classical music format development for broadcast. The result appeals to both the initiated and the curious, regardless of age.

Aurora now dons its establishment cloak. No longer a start-up of graduates, but an organisation that has graduated itself. The bigger challenge, then, is not just sustaining what they’ve achieved, but avoiding the moment they jump the shark.

While Aurora is successfully consolidating its storytelling credentials, the music — the performance of the work — needs to speak for itself. If it doesn’t, then we’re simply judging a broadcast moment, not an orchestral performance. The majority will focus on the memorisation as the achievement rather than the storytelling in the work as performed in its entirety uninterrupted. Basically, if you want to be known for turning in an amazing performance it doesn’t matter how good the dramatised programme notes are: that memorised performance has got to say something beyond it simply being memorised.

The statements are bold, and the brazen defiance stitched into Shostakovich’s score are fully exploited by Aurora in the first movement. There are moments in the fortissimos when the ensemble slips between brass and strings, but the solos in wind and brass in the chilling contrasting sections are on point, with warmth and polish. The concluding violin solo is bright, and the accompanying slide in the strings pleasing, but I miss the bleak desperation.

The second movement starts with customary gruffness in the cellos and basses. Clarion calls from the horns later secure this as the point where everything has come together, flute solo and harp flourishes tying everything up into a neat, if slightly unsettling, bow. The throwaway ending has a similar tidiness but lacks edge and grit.

For me, the third movement needs a hungry kind of gloom to it — a sense that we’re exhausted, sweaty, but still determined. It’s here in performance that there’s a growing sense the polish needed for theatrics eats into a truly spontaneous and therefore profound performance. It’s here I’m wishing I hadn’t heard the story played out in the first half.

And so, through no fault of their own, the awkward insistence of the concluding movement is lost. It’s precise and it’s brilliant, but it lacks the edge a story triggered by music alone can bring about. Aurora are the sophisticated present-day version of Bernstein’s original TV pitch. But it is — and I’m genuinely sorry if this offends anyone — something that lacks the punch I need from this most brutally subversive musical statement.

---

---

Gallery