Shostakovich Ten with Queensland Symphony Orchestra
Click here if you liked this article 7 
https://www.brisbanefestival.com.au/events/shostakovich-ten
Date Reviewed: 19/09/2025
At QPAC Concert Hall, Queensland Symphony Orchestra delivered a program that reminded us why the great 20th-century Russians still thrill, provoke, and unsettle. Featuring conductor Umberto Clerici at the helm, piano soloist Alexander Gavrylyuk in dazzling form, and a bold visual accompaniment from artist William Kentridge, this was no ordinary orchestral night. Shostakovich Ten was an excavation of history, politics, and human endurance, framed in sound and image.
The evening opened with Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 3 in C, Op.26, a work notorious for its mischievous brilliance and rhythmic bite. Gavrylyuk made light work of its devilish passages, his hands sometimes a blur, sometimes floating like dancers across the grand piano's keys. He gave us not only velocity but shading; sudden shifts from sparkling irony to tender reflection were rendered with finesse. His control of volume and tone was emotionally charged, coaxing out humour in one moment and poignancy the next. Clerici, equally invested, drew out the orchestra’s playful dialogues with the piano, the winds answering with cheeky retorts, the strings digging into Prokofiev’s driving motor rhythms. By the fiery conclusion, the conductor was literally airborne, delightfully leaping at the last chord, as if lifted by the music itself. It was thrilling to watch.
After interval came Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 10 in E minor, Op.93, a work born in the shadow of Stalin’s death and often described as a portrait of tyranny and survival. The pre-show talk had already primed us with its socio-political context, but nothing compares to hearing it unfold live. The first movement brooded in the low strings before blossoming into colossal, tam-tam-punctuated climaxes. The Allegro second movement struck like a lightning bolt: fierce, relentless, its martial energy unmistakably oppressive. The third movement, with its tender horn calls and Shostakovich’s musical signature (the DSCH motif), introduced something more personal, his own identity and longing hiding amid the terror. By the finale, the symphony clawed its way to hard-won triumph, the orchestra brimming with energy and precision.
During this piece, Kentridge’s film Oh To Believe in Another World added a daring extra dimension. The film pulled us through a cardboard museum populated by puppets of Lenin, Stalin, Trotsky, Mayakovsky and Shostakovich himself. Part grotesque collage, part surreal satire, its imagery expanded our grasp of the symphony’s context. At times disarmingly funny, at others painfully devastating, it never overwhelmed the music but instead echoed and refracted its emotional trajectory. The film reminded us that the symphony is not just abstract sound but testimony. It is art born of oppression, speaking to us as urgently now as it did to the Russians in 1953.
What struck me most was how well all the elements of the evening worked together. The virtuoso piano, passionate conducting, a full-bodied orchestra, and visual storytelling were the perfect ingredients for a entertaining and thought-provoking show. Clerici’s leadership was vital; his emotive gestures and evident connection with the musicians ensured cohesion. The orchestra sounded electric, full of energy, responsive to the shifting demands of both composers.
This concert felt like a dialogue between past and present, art and politics, sound and image. The themes of rebellion, survival, and the absurdities of power resonate all too clearly today. Queensland Symphony Orchestra didn’t just play music; they staged an experience that was by turns dazzling, harrowing, and profoundly human. Audience members curious about the power of music to both reflect and transcend history were treated to an unmissable night that QSO and the Brisbane Festival can be proud to have produced.
Reviewed by Kitty Goodall