Prokofiev
Lieutenant Kijé – Suite, Op.60
Schumann
Cello Concerto in A minor, Op.129
Shostakovich
Symphony No.10 in E minor, Op.93
Truls Mørk (cello)
City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra
Andrey Boreyko
Reviewed by: Richard Whitehouse
Reviewed: 5 October, 2004
Venue: Symphony Hall, Birmingham
One of the most interesting aspects of a UK concert season is the appearance of conductors touted abroad but as yet little known here. Such is Andrey Boreyko – the young Russian widely respected in Canada and Europe, tonight making his debut with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. With a podium manner notable for its precision and economy, Boreyko follows more in the lineage of Mravinsky and Pletnev rather than the overtly demonstrative approach of Svetlanov or Gergiev.
You would be hard put to hear an account of Prokofiev’s Lieutenant Kijé suite of greater clarity and expressive poise. True, pacing in the ‘Romance’ could have been a little more accommodating to the hard-pressed double bass soloist, while ‘Kijé’s Wedding’ and the famous ‘Troika’ was crisply dispatched if lacking respectively in humour and exhilaration. Most convincing were the depictions of Kijé’s birth and burial – given here with just the right combination of pathos and whimsy, and with a superimposing of themes near the close of the latter section that aptly evoked a surreal sense of déja-vu.