Violinist Lü Siqing and conductor Sir Andrew Davis performing with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra (photographed by Ivan Kemp)

The Polovtsian Dances are an effective curtain-raiser and their vibrant celebration of Russian exoticism clearly enthused the audience in Hamer Hall. The MSO may have first performed them in 1940, but this was surely in the wake of their inclusion in each of the three Australian tours of the Ballets Russes company in the late 1930s. The chorus sang confidently throughout, and although the orchestra experienced some initial problems with ensemble, Davis’s brisk approach ensured seamless transitions and drew splendid playing from the lead woodwinds in the virtuosic solos. Despite the undeniable energy and goodwill of the performance as a whole, my overall impression was of a fluid and at times even jolly reading, rather than an evocation of the sensual mystery and pulsating savagery of the Polovtsian inhabitants of Borodin’s ‘East’.

The ensemble shrank back to the proportions of a classical orchestra for our return to the West in Bruch’s attractive Violin Concerto No. 1 in G minor, offering a beautiful and consistent reading in support of Lü Siqing’s somewhat quixotic performance of the violin solo. Bruch, a German Romantic classicist, composed this deeply expressive concerto in the 1860s. Playing the 1699 Stradivari instrument ‘Miss Crespi’ (lent by MSO Deputy Chairman David Li), Lü Siqing achieved considerable beauty of sound in the lyrical and pianissimo passages of the second movement (taken last night at a very slow Adagio). His approach to the virtuoso bravura writing, however, followed the trend of later twentieth-century violinists, approaching the double stops with an aggressive attack that seems unsuited to the work’s overall aesthetic, and that contrasted with the stylistic integrity of Davis’s interpretation. Bruch himself favoured the Spanish violinist Pablo de Sarasate, whose controlled rubato and effortless virtuosity was influenced by the Franco-Belgian school of violin performance. The audience responded warmly to Lü Siqing’s performance, and were rewarded with a showman-like rendition of Vittorio Monti’s Csárdás, eschewing the clichéd inflections associated with the Csárdás style.

Sir Andrew Davis conducting the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra (photographed by Ivan Kemp)

Excoriated by his nationalist peers for sentimental emotionalism, Tchaikovsky’s final symphony has been pigeon-holed as tragic by the reading of his biography into its interpretation, and fuelled by his sudden death soon afterwards. The subtitle ‘Pathétique’ (applied only after the première) comes from a Russian term better rendered in English as ‘passionate’, or ‘suffering’, to reflect the varied emotional territory this disciplined composer traverses across the four movements. Deservedly popular, the work’s influence is such that its music was both literally reproduced and generally evoked in golden-age cinema, its sweeping lyricism modelling the soundscape of 1940s Hollywood melodramas, like Max Steiner’s score to Now, Voyager (1942), while the joyous textures of the third movement are intimated in Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s exuberant underscoring of Robin Hood’s adventures in the 1938 Errol Flynn swashbuckler The Adventures of Robin Hood.

Both the orchestra and Andrew Davis, opening his final season as the MSO’s Chief Conductor, clearly enjoyed playing the symphony, their rapport evident in a performance of complete conviction. The clarity and quiet intensity of the opening Adagio were marred by a chorus of coughs and sneezes from the audience, but this could not hide magnificent playing from the lower strings, the burnished tone from the brass, and the nicely judged Romantic swells. Davis’s subtle use of rubato and astute control of the stormy development section provided a satisfying reading of the first movement. Although the steady pace of the Allegro con grazia rendered the second movement a little earthbound, the 5/4 waltz flowed without awkwardness, achieving a pleasing lilt in the reprise. The third movement opened with Mendelssohnian sprightliness, and after fluid dialogue between the instrumental groups, heightening suspense and drama led into a rollicking final section that brought the audience to the brink of applause, only averted by Davis’s injunction before the symphony. A suspended breath separated this delight from the richly expressive string textures of the Adagio lamentoso, in a performance marked by potent use of silence. Davis combined passion with dynamic forward motion to avoid the lugubrious longueurs that sometimes weigh down interpretations of this celebrated movement. The audience was held rapt as the last notes died away into an extraordinarily long silence, finally broken by sustained and heartfelt applause.

The Season Opening Gala was performed by the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra and was conducted by Andrew Davis in Hamer Hall, Arts Centre Melbourne. Performance attended: 16 March 2019.