The Guardian, UK
Jan 22 2005

Philharmonia/Segerstam
Royal Festival Hall, London

Tim Ashley

The jury, it would seem, is out on the Armenian composer Aram
Khachaturian. He’s best known for a series of vast, socialist-realist
ballet scores such as Gayaneh and Spartacus. Massive, impressive
works, they were the mainstay of the Soviet repertoire and hugely
popular in the west, where they were regularly plundered by film and
TV companies for incidental music – the BBC’s Onedin Line is the most
famous example. Since the collapse of the former Eastern bloc,
however, his work has been less frequently heard. Even though he fell
foul of Stalin in 1948, a whiff of Soviet orthodoxy still clings to
him, and we can’t read signs of dissidence into his music as we can
with his contemporary Shostakovich.
The Piano Concerto – performed here by the Philharmonia under Leif
Segerstam, with Boris Berezovsky as soloist – was the piece that shot
Khachaturian to fame in 1936. Rooted, like much of his music, in the
asymmetrical rhythms and exotic modalities of Caucasian folk music,
it’s a work of exuberance and charm, flanking an exquisite central
andante with outer movements at once playful and ferocious. Two
murderous cadenzas make the piece tricky for the pianist, though
Berezovsky played it with ease and almost shocking dexterity.

Segerstam’s conducting, however, arouses mixed feelings. He often
generates excitement and emotion at the expense of finesse. His
thrilling if unsubtle approach, telling in Khachaturian’s concerto,
was perhaps less suited to the rest of the concert. Glinka’s overture
to Russlan and Ludmila was unyielding and brass heavy. His
interpretation of Dvorak’s New World Symphony was epic and intense,
aspiring to tragedy in the famous largo rather than nostalgia. In
many respects this was preferable to the sentimental view of the work
favoured by some, but it could have been better played and its power
was offset by some moments of ragged ensemble.