It’s not unusual for composers to hold teaching posts at conservatoires, and Emily Howard is no exception. But not many can also claim to be visiting senior fellow at the University of Liverpool’s Faculty of Sciences and Engineering; or to be quite as committed to producing large-scale orchestral works that stand as aural models of advanced mathematical concepts.
Torus, Howard’s 20 minute concerto for orchestra, was commissioned and premiered by the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic at last year’s Proms and here received its home debut. It is based on a figure that is sometimes described as resembling an elongated doughnut, though presumably without the jam, as Howard’s ethereal, deliberately slow-moving piece established a slippery, infinite glissando as if running a finger around the rim of the known universe.
Vasily Petrenko has quite an ear for exciting young pianists – his partnerships with Simon Trpčeski and Daniil Trifonov are fast becoming legendary – and here he introduced another: the Swiss-born Teo Gheorghiu, who combines the hairstyle of a Premiership footballer with the soul of a poet. Gheorghiu approached Liszt’s transcription of Schubert’s Wanderer Fantasy with such introspection the slow movement barely registered a pulse. But his liquid, legato playing was quite mesmerising at times.
Shostakovich’s 12th Symphony is outwardly his most conventional – the only one to observe standard sonata form – and consequently the most overlooked. Perhaps wisely, Petrenko avoided picking the work apart for coded anti-communist references, but painted the undeniably stirring evocation of the 1917 Bolshevik revolution in the garish, unequivocal colours of a Soviet workers’ epic. This was socialist realism at its most gloriously kitsch and unabashed.
- The programme is partially repeated at the Philharmonic Hall, Liverpool, on Sunday 22 January. Box office: 0151-709 3789.
