Dmitry Matvienko: Mussorgsky and Shostakovich in concert with La Monnaie at the Bozar in Brussels

"I read, as I genned up on young Matvienko, that his conducting was 'incisive, rigorous, steadfast, and careful to bring out the details' of the score (the score in question being Janacek's House of the Dead, no less, in Rome in 2023). So, in Brussels, it turned out to be. Just add 'vigorous' to 'rigorous': A Night on the Bare Mountain got off to a sizzling start, and one of the most immediately striking aspects of his conducting was his precision management of massive blocks of orchestral sound: sudden outbursts and sudden silences were handled impeccably, whirlwind tempi notwithstanding.

Very noticeable, too, was the dynamic range he coaxed out of the orchestra, from a barely audible pianississimo - of a kind you rarely hear - to a full-orchestra volume that had the lady in front discreetly putting a finger to her ears. With Altinoglu’s help, La Monnaie’s upper strings now achieve that glassy, searing sound that to me is one of the signs of a world-class ensemble. What I missed, in the Shostakovich, was the bleak, frosty desolation of Russian orchestras’ pianississimi, and the distinctive vibrato of the winds and brass, but you can't blame Brussels musicians for being Belgian.

Those reviews of the Janacek in Rome also noted Matvienko’s unfailing attentiveness, dynamic range notwithstanding, to the singers, here very evident in the Mussorgsky song cycle. On the podium, this slight figure, nattily buttoned up in black, conducts with a dancing bounce and spring that (albeit incongruously, in repertoire terms) recalls Rousset conducting Rameau. (From an Australian review: ‘He has an athletic style and broad physical language with almost balletic gestures…’) This brings a rhythmic jauntiness to the performance useful in Shostakovich’s more parodic, sardonic or sarcastic passages.

And it’s a real pleasure to watch him bring touches of colour and nuance to the performance with a turn of the hand, a pinch of the fingers, a shake of the head, a hunch of the shoulders… There’s a kind of meticulous rectitude to his conducting - perhaps the ‘steadfastness’ mentioned in that review from Rome. The potentially trashy and bombastic finale to Shostakovich’s 5th was, in his hands, simply straightforwardly triumphant. The timpani player had a ball."

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