By a nose... the Kirov production of The Nose
If there's one thing about Shostakovich that never fails to amaze me, it's the regularity of his anniversaries, writes Leo Blake. The man is the most prolific anniversary dedicatee I've ever known - you'd think he died twice or had two birthdays, like the Queen.
Last year was the 30th anniversary of his death, this year the centenary of his birth, so Shostakovich cycles are once again busting out all over, indulging what appears to be our dual fascination with box sets and totalitarian regimes.
There isn't much discontent smouldering under the surface of The Nose, which kicked off the Kirov's Shostakovich on Stage jamboree last Thursday. It's an odd work, a bit of flashy 1920s modernism reminiscent of Krenek and early Kurt Weill, written well before 1936 when a denunciation in Pravda bullied the composer out of writing for the theatre.
The score is noisy and non-developmental; Gogol's wacky short story about a man who loses his nose is set to a hectic succession of disparate styles without much continuity. This was not your usual Shostfest - there was not a trace of the famous D S C H signature motif, which Shostakovich used to represent himself, and plagues his later works.
In fact, this musically schizophrenic Nose is a far cry from the bone-crushing inevitability of the composer's mature crowd-pleasers and doesn't contain much for binge-listening Shostakovich spotters, which is possibly why a lady in my row walked out after 15 minutes.
Now, I'm all in favour of these weird early works, but what I fail to understand is how London can cope with two - yes, two - different Noses taking place simultaneously, one at an all but sold-out ENO, the other at the Linbury studio at Covent Garden. Shouldn't the Arts Council appoint some kind of Shost-buster to control this festival mania?
