Eruptions of Subconscious Torment Split the Psyche: Jakub Hrůša and BBC Symphony Orchestra at Barbican Centre

The limitless conductor guided the ensemble through inactionable angst in works by Pavel Haas, Beethoven and Shostakovich

Jakub Hrůša works magic. Photo credit: BBC/Sarah Louise Bennett

Masquerading as a raid by early dusk, black busts of smoke poke wholesome sky in search of slaughter: missiles dressed as night. Despite their distance terror strikes the mind.

Resistant to these truths, the brain succumbs to dances of denial. Opening this Barbican Centre concert with Pavel Haas’s ‘Scherzo triste,’ Jakub Hrůša squeezed staccato laughs from vicious violins until the brass released andante sermons of correction. Chords copying each another mimicked echoes in a mental turbulence then dimmed their chaos into tremolos of longing. Harps’ dapples played with the imagination to escort their victim back to dreaming; flirty trills’ staccatos leapt like crinolines. Surrendering to sensuousness, tremolos on violin distracted from a core of pain by lulling listeners with a hypnosis: fantasy replacing real life.

Ebullient lilts on flute embarked the audience on Beethoven’s Second Piano Concerto’s first movement, ‘Allegro con brio.’ Bristling at their trills, the violins lynched with superbly timed attacks. Tyrannically punctual strings began to self-efface – repeating chords at one third of their volume. The clan descended into cadences of solemn misery in the ‘Adagio’ movement; taming their excitement as the brass emitted growls of omens. Oboes bowed their heads in grave farewell as violins suspended animation with a poised surrender of their bows.

At the helm of this concerto’s solo, pianist Jonathan Biss shaped the contours of mordents and turns with refined adoration. Rill-like trills dripped irresistibly from the performer’s fingers, patterning the keyboard with a stylish virtuosity. A master at assembling mirrors of dynamics, Biss subtly imitated right-hand, bold crescendo chords with dainty, soft ones on the left in the first movement. Staccato runs made delicately figured exits at his hands and tuplets climbed in a pristine technique.

Sombreness impressed itself upon the second movement with remarkable diminuendi between wider intervals that called to mind reluctant partings. At the same time, left-hand arpeggios could have been more accented, and some fifth-finger right-hand notes demanded extra stress. Gallops of staccatos sped the ‘Rondo’ movement up vivaciously but high ends of ascending scales lacked culminative force.

Biss presented Schubert’s ‘Impromptu No. 3 in G-Flat Major’ as his encore: a nostalgic souvenir. Here left-hand broken chords seemed overly restrained by their andante; diffidence deployed right hand arpeggios. Though the rendition offered tender lyricism, certain moments could have been performed with more accentuation. The final chord conversely didn’t need to follow a long pause.

Bent hope made plods from harp chords to begin the eerie ‘Symphony No. 11 in G Minor, “The Year 1905”’: Shostakovich’s commemoration of the year’s failed uprising against the Tsar. An exercise in self-rebuttal, the arresting work stamps cries of agony till they are muffles. At Hrůša’s baton long-held notes on strings were shaking fists in cuffs with veiled vibrato; timpani triplets stayed perversely calm. Vibrato veered the muted trumpet into portents set to send more hands atremble; strings persisted in their stillness. A moderato mood enchained ‘Adagio (The Palace Square)’ until the instruments seemed totally transfixed: blurred figures swimming in a frozen lake.

Cellos’ scrambles burst with militance into the second movement: ‘Allegro: The 9th of January.’ Squawks of seagulls pinching a clear sky were manic flutes until fierce pizzicato mimed a ticking clock. Taps of bows were knocking fists insisting on a revolution but the harps played simultaneously in specious peace. Not only were the sounds suggestive of the texture of a coup d’état, the regularity of the motifs embodied stereotypical behaviours of shattered minds: obsessive orders to the self.

Violas’ languor introduced a slow lament for the third movement, ‘In memoriam: Adagio.’ At a rigidly andante pace they buried impetus and instinct – shovelling them gracefully away in notes of equal tone and reverent lengths. Cellos clambered in a pizzicato’s semi-protest with unstoppable propriety. Burgeoning trombones and tubas groaned with torpid notes but harnessed strings refused to shake in their containment. Behaving beats on tempered timpani were the defining moment in this censored requiem.

Inexplicit strictures of self-flagellation shaped the final movement, ‘The Tocsin: Allegro non troppo’ with an echo of the first. Punchy chords divided by politely ordered intervals engaged the brass to knock (but unobtrusively) on yet another barricaded door; pernicious repetition on the strings suggested instability. The snare drum’s irrepressible motif kept summoning its troops to fight – or to desist? Its despotism’s destination was unclear.

Returning to the yearning heard in the first movement, a cor anglais attempted a respectful mumble hoping to become an utterance that might evolve into a yell. Shrieks peaked on xylophone and bells warned of impending bloodshed until everything was dust.

Portraying angst about to burst a rattled mind, this concert offered listeners an otherworldly paradox: art’s opposite in tightened impulses, controlled responses and the madness of enforced conformity served through an apogee of art.