Before King Kong there was Orango, half-ape, half-man, the creation of Soviet writer Alexei Tolstoy, and protagonist of an unfinished satirical opera by Shostakovich that is one of classical music’s great “what-ifs”. The product of western genetic engineering and capitalist folly, Orango is now on show at a grand, internationally observed state occasion in Moscow, where he threatens to run amok.
The opera was commissioned by Moscow’s Bolshoi Theatre in 1932, then mysteriously cancelled. All that remains is a piano score of the prologue, which was orchestrated by Gerard McBurney in 2009. We can only surmise what the rest would have been like. Whether it would have survived the Stalinist clampdown of 1936 is questionable, though Alexei Tolstoy, whom Stalin admired, was to remain an official figure throughout the dictatorship.
Esa-Pekka Salonen, who conducted the Los Angeles premiere in 2011, brought the work to the Proms in a big semi-staging by Irina Brown that transformed the Albert Hall into a Soviet rally. Stalinist posters hung from the balconies. The Philharmonia, on fine form, wore red sashes and Salonen looked natty in a red hammer and sickle T-shirt. The promenaders were issued with red flags which they were instructed to wave on cue, though at one point they were also chillingly told to laugh at gunpoint. Bitterly funny, it was handsomely sung by the Philharmonia Voices and a cast from St Petersburg’s Mariinsky theatre.
Salonen coupled it with Bartók’s Miraculous Mandarin and Mozart’s C minor Piano Concerto K 491, played with elegant detachment by David Fray. Salonen is no Mozartian, and this most troubled of the composer’s concertos was short on tension. Though the hall’s acoustic blunts the hard edges of Bartók’s savage ballet, it was thrillingly done – as violent, sexy and scary as one could wish.
• The Proms continue until 12 September. Box office: 0845-401 5040.
