In honour of the centenary of Shostakovich's birth, celebrated on Thursday, this weekend sees Manchester hosting one of the largest ever tributes to the composer. David Ward is there for Culture Vulture ...
The audience is full of pensioners. But perhaps they're the only ones free to bunk off from normal life on a working day to spend hours with one of the great composers of the 20th century.
And not just a day: a whole weekend in which the entire chamber music of Dmitri Shostakovich will be played at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester. And this is itself a prelude to a series of 12 concerts at the city's Bridgewater Hall, in which all 15 symphonies (not to mention a chunk of Offenbach) will he heard over five and bit weeks.
Quite a feast. "But why Manchester?" asked a predictable London voice. Because Manchester got its act together and drew on its resources: two symphony orchestras, a conservatoire, a music school for brilliant kids. That's why Manchester.
The fans, including me, are out in force, wearing anoraks and sensible jumpers (and, in my case, predictable corduroy), to listen in pin-drop silence. "I think this immersion is wonderful,'' enthuses a woman in a red coat with matching flask.
I am an unashamed groupie: don't look to me for sensible, detached criticism. Don't look for any criticism: I don't know much about music but etc etc. (How, by the way, do real critics do it? Catch those fleeting moments, think vertically as the music passes by horizontally?)
I missed the morning session (which began, God help us, with a lecture at 9.15) but have sloped off from the northern news agenda and caught a recital including the fifth of 24 preludes and fugues, written in homage to Bach. This is one I know: there are two CDs in my recorded set but I've become stuck like an old 78 record on CD one. So I know the low numbers but collapse when they hit double figures.
The Osborne Quartet, one of many student groups taking part, plays the fourth quartet gustily. Not one of the greatest, perhaps, but a personal favourite, the first movement languorous, the third threatening to break into William Tell at any moment. The op. 127 setting of poems by Alexander Blok drift between melancholy, terror and beautiful simplicity. So much passion, so much emotion.
The bloke behind me spoils the mood by droning on about errors in transliteration of the Russian text. A break and then time for another recital. While we wait, a woman concentrates fiercely on her Sudoku, a man reads the New Statesman and two chaps recall (one loudly) a horn player from their Oxford days. Another prelude (number 19) and its accompanying look-at-me fugue given a-look-at-me performance. The Sudoku lady does not clap.
Another break, another recital. I do a runner after prelude and (very lyrical) fugue number 22 because it's time for tea. A man in the audience wears a t-shirt with Shostakovich's name across his back where another kind of fan might have Rooney's.
Lots more to come tomorrow (Saturday), including many quartets and the very favourite seventh prelude and fugue. Time to set the alarm.
