Music / Gershwin and Shostakovich, Australian Chamber Orchestra. At Llewellyn Hall, August 9. Reviewed by MICHAEL WILSON.

Shostakovich and Gershwin might have had little else in common, but both were inclined to be daring.

By the time Gershwin premiered Rhapsody in Blue in 1924, he was already a wildly successful composer of popular and show music, so one could argue he could afford to be daring.

For Shostakovich, whose life and career coincided with the lifespan of the Soviet Union, being daring was somewhat more consequential, and potentially disastrous, especially when the regime was unable to specify exactly what music qualified as subversive. 

The concert opened with Canadian composer Claude Vivier’s Japanese-inspired Zipangu (land of sunrise). A composer of the avant-garde, and a protégé of Karlheinz Stockhausen, this piece was textural, with artistic director Richard Tognetti conducting orchestral phases and aural progressions.

This was an education in the range available from stringed instruments in the hands of superb players, using percussive plucking, long-bowed drones and vibratory techniques to produce different effects. Violas mimicking descending firework-like whistling sounds was quite something to behold. 

The world premiere of Valentin Silvestrov’s Moments of Memory (VI) was a treat. Silvestrov’s life had a strong connection with that of Shostakovich, in his struggle with Soviet orthodoxy and testing its tolerance for innovation. 

It also intersects with the concert’s extraordinary piano soloist, Alexander Gavrylyuk. Both Ukrainian natives, their musical lives and influences have been impacted by both the Soviet era and this century’s devastating conflict.

Silvestrov’s work featured Richard Tognetti’s violin solo in classical style atop much more modern and dissonant chords from the other strings, moving into a canon-style relay of melodic passages. With a gentle, diffused sense to it, the piece ends in a melodic, meditative mood.

For Shostakovich’s piano concerto No.1 in C minor, Gavrylyuk curled his body over the keyboard and delivered a technically precise and appropriately dramatic opening.

This work also features solo trumpet, although in an oddly disconnected way where the piano and the trumpet never seem entirely comfortable in each other’s company.

Nevertheless, David Elton gave a flawless rendition of his several solo trumpet passages. Gavrylyuk took a quick tempo throughout, but provided excellent visual cues to the orchestra – and was occasionally funny and playful leaning into interactions between the piano and the violins – so that orchestra and soloists were perfectly in time. Everything Gavrylyuk did looked intentional and purposeful. 

Gershwin’s quintessentially American Rhapsody in Blue is something any audience should rush to experience: a textured, sophisticated expression of modern music, showcasing jazz, blues and big band influences wrapped up in the drama of orchestral sound.

When David Elton played what is perhaps the most famous opening phrase for solo clarinet in the entire orchestral repertoire on the trumpet, it seemed completely natural. Elton performed on three trumpets, interacting joyfully and seamlessly with Gavrylyuk on piano and the string players. 

To finish, the opening to Shostakovich’s Chamber Symphony in C minor was delivered with a rich, sumptuous, melancholic expression at the opening.

Moving into the more frenetic allegro and then the allegretto, there is a sense of panicked fleeing from danger. The ACO finished the largo with the most exquisite fading of the music into nothingness, drawing a long pause before the final applause.