Kirill Karabits and the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra excel in lighter Shostakovich

United Kingdom Shostakovich: Alim Beisembayev (piano), Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra / Kirill Karabits (conductor). Lighthouse, Poole, 11.2.2026. (CK)

Shostakovich – Theme and Variations; Piano Concerto No.2; Suite, The Bolt; Suite, Moscow, Cheryomushki

This programme of Shostakovich’s music had an odds-and-ends look about it; a collection (the Second Piano Concerto aside) of less well-known works by the Russian master of the symphony and the string quartet. Why was there such a full and enthusiastic house? Because Kirill Karabits, Chief Conductor of the orchestra for 15 years, was back, and the Bournemouth audience has not forgotten him. His first appearance sparked a rapturous reception, some audience members leaping immediately to their feet.

When we listen to the music of Shostakovich we are conscious – often intensely so – of the man: his life, his melancholy, the political oppression he suffered, and so on. This is to some extent true of any composer, but Shostakovich is, I think, a special case: the autobiographical and documentary elements of his music are so unignorably strong. This collection of lighter pieces was like an incomplete but vivid jigsaw: important parts were missing, but there was enough to bring a powerful and authentic sense of his presence into the hall.

Shostakovich’s Theme and Variations, Op.3, was composed when he was sixteen: yet it isn’t long before the student composer-to-be starts to do things with his innocuous string theme that give us a foretaste of what is to come. There is a hint of Tchaikovsky here, of Petrushka there, Mussorgsky further along: but the music is not derivative. There are idiosyncratic moments: strings against chattering woodwinds, flute and piccolo against horn fifths, a characterful bassoon solo, a pompous trombone chorale. Much of the music is bright, expansive, of Romantic and even heroic temper: but the rumbustious conclusion already sounds vintage Shostakovich. Karabits and the orchestra dispatched it with considerable brio.

The ensuing performance of the Second Piano Concerto forged a touching family link with the earlier piece: Shostakovich, now 50, wrote it for his son Maxim, who premiered it on his nineteenth birthday. Launched in pawky fashion by the bassoons and the dry rat-a-tat of the side drum, the first movement made its high-spirited way, soloist Alim Beisembayev joining in the fun with a sparkling right hand: in the year that he wrote the Eleventh Symphony Shostakovich had clearly not lost his knack for writing in this vein. Occasionally (from where I was sitting) the piano was overpowered by the orchestra; but together they reached a gloriously extrovert finish. The beautiful Andante was lovingly played (the programme note mentioned Rachmaninov, but one can also think of Mozart); and the finale had irresistible dash (though most people probably enjoy that insistently clattery 7-beat dance-rhythm more than I do). Beisembayev went down a storm.

After the interval it was back to the relatively palmy days of the early 1930s – before all the trouble with Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk and the Fourth Symphony – represented here by the Suite from the ballet The Bolt. Perhaps this is the closest Shostakovich got to the Constructivism of Prokofiev’s Second Symphony and Mosolov’s The Iron Foundry (both powerfully performed in London last month by Vladimir Jurowski and the London Philharmonic): except of course that his gleefully parodic dances sidestep seriousness altogether. The most industrial part of the performance was – as so often in Shostakovich – the percussion section (including a mighty gong).

It would take too long to detail the instrumental highlights of the performance: so I will content myself with the perky duet for flute (Anna Pyne) and bassoon (Tammy Thorn) in the Overture; Ed Hilton’s raucous bass trombone in The Bureaucrat’s Dance; Bryony Middleton’s lovely cor anglais in The Dance of the Colonial Slave-Girl; and the extended xylophone solo in The Conciliator (whoever he was, he surely deserved a solo bow). The orchestra – virtuosos all – reached their apogee in Kozelkov’s Dance with his Friends – a kind of super-tango, superbly and excitingly played, and beautifully controlled by Karabits.

The concert then skipped the whole of the Stalinist era to end with the Suite from Moscow, Cheryomushki, the operetta Shostakovich composed soon after the Second Piano Concerto. With two harps and a tenor sax joining the already large orchestra we were in for a grandstand finish – even if it didn’t quite reach the heights of that tango. I enjoyed Kyle Horch’s smoky saxophone in the Waltz, both solo and duetting with Paul Bosworth’s soft trumpet, the tune spaciously taken up by passionate strings (not far from Dr Zhivago territory); and tight brass playing in the succeeding Dances brought an echo of Rossini’s William Tell. Things got a little wild in the Presto finale but the BSO were on it to the last player: it was a superb finish.

Hard to express the alchemy between conductor, score, players and audience: but the result was a fine concert. And it was good to see David Daly, long-serving Principal Double Bass, back at his post after illness.

Chris Kettle