Three years occupy heart and brain almost painfully, while in the Isarphilharmonie the Czech Philharmonic under its chief conductor Semyon Bychkov electrifies Dmitri Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 11. On November 9, 1905, the tsar caused a bloodbath in Moscow among demonstrators who wanted to hand over a petition, causing a thousand deaths – that’s what the symphony is about! Premiered 65 years ago, it also tells of the bloody suppression of the uprising in Hungary in 1956, a year earlier, by Soviet troops. And today you can sometimes do it incredibly martially with drum rolls as a recurring theme Cantus Firmus and often with tremendous uproar in the brass depicting violence and terror, then again deeply mourning music, without thinking of Russia’s war against Ukraine and Europe.
It was too much for a few listeners and they left the hall in a panic. Because the intensity and attention to detail with which the Czechs under Bychkov played “The Year 1905” got under your skin and was lastingly disturbing. In retrospect, how harmless did Robert Schumann’s piano concerto appear with Víkingur Ólafsson as the soloist, especially since the Icelander played alternately on two continents: wonderfully veiled tenderly when he was able to enchant quietly with Schumann’s melos and celebrated the transition to the finale as if breathed into nothingness; punched icy crystal clear, on the other hand, when he was allowed to show off with the orchestra as a virtuoso.
Of course, there was no connection between these two worlds, the very intimate private and the extroverted public one, and so the two encores were the most beautiful: an arrangement of the Andante from Johann Sebastian Bach’s Fourth Organ Sonata by August Stradal from the Czech Philharmonic, unfolding like a mountain range and subtle by Béla Bartók.