The vibrant heart of the Salzburg Festival, the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, under the Russian conductor Valery Gergiev presents an exclusively Russian programme whose theme and content revolve around the most profound questions of human life.
The concert opens with Igor Stravinsky's Symphony of Psalms, a work of exquisite beauty. For his setting of three Psalms from the Old Testament Stravinsky chose to rely heavily on his Russian roots and old church music, reinforcing them in their ritualistic effect by borrowing from Gregorian chorales. Modest Musorgsky's Songs and Dances of Death on the other hand concentrate on an end to human life without any prospect of mercy or a better life beyond the grave. The four settings are based on poems by his friend Arseny Golenishchev-Kutuzov that in turn reflect the medieval motif of a "dance of death". Here, Death personified seeks victim irrespective of rank or standing: he sings a small child to sleep, overpowers a young woman disguised as a charming lover, breaks the will of a farmer lost in a snowstorm by offering him a vision of spring, appears to the victims of a battle as an authoritarian general. "The Russian tenor Sergei Semishkur [lent] these fascinatingly dark songs an alarming intensity" (Der Standard) – a masterly feat on the brink of the existential abyss. The ghostly character of these poems is elaborated with the greatest degree of sensitivity and immense dynamic diversity by the Vienna Philharmonic and Valery Gergiev.
The composer spent some eleven years collecting the thematic material for this symphony, always in search of absolute "clarity of the melodic line". As a result, and independent of the strong political pressures of the Stalinist censor on this magnificent work, this all too seldom played symphony is a splendid masterpiece.
