Shostakovich's Second Violin Concerto tends to get overshadowed by the First. Written in the relatively easier political atmosphere of 1967, it is every bit as serious and demanding as the first, but more introverted and personal. Today we can see that the two works, both written for David Oistrakh, stand in apposition to one another.
The Armenian violinist Sergey Khachatryan made an irresistible case for the second concerto. This was a performance of intense inward eloquence, sweet-toned and reflective, with Khachatryan rarely opening his eyes during a restrained and expressive account of a solo part that even Oistrakh found difficult. The sense of the composer, then recovering from a heart attack, confronting his own mortality was palpable in the musings of the first two movements and the anger in the finale. The concerto felt like the musical expression of Shostakovich's comment that if he had his time over again he would live it utterly differently.
Refinement is not always uppermost in the impulsive dramatic qualities of Valery Gergiev. But he and the LSO proved impeccable accompanists and, after the interval, turned on the Slavic charm in a beguiling performance of Tchaikovsky's First Symphony, the start of a Gergiev Tchaikovsky cycle that stretches into 2012. It is hard, in this severe winter of our own, to connect Tchaikovsky's subtitle, Winter Daydreams, with much of the music in a symphony that, for all its unmistakable authorship, is at times generic. But the scintillating Scherzo was irresistible. This is clearly a cycle not to be missed.
