Music / Shostakovich, National Capital Orchestra. At Snow Concert Hall, Red Hill, April 6. Reviewed by LEN POWER

Centred around the theme of Harmony, Symphony No.5 by Dimitri Shostakovich was an impressive choice for the National Capital Orchestra’s first concert of 2025.

The program also included Sydney composer Ella Macens’ beautiful work, The Space Between the Stars, and Carl Maria von Weber’s bassoon Concerto Op. 75, with soloist Ben Hoadley.

The Space Between the Stars was nominated for the Sydney Symphony Orchestra’s first People’s Choice Concert and premiered in Sydney in 2018.

This beautiful work was the perfect choice for the start of the concert, conveying the energy and magic of the night sky and its bright shining stars.

The orchestra gave it a performance of great visual clarity, bringing out moments of delicate sensitivity as well as a sense of the overwhelming vastness of space.

Carl Maria von Weber’s bassoon concerto is widely performed around the world and is often regarded as only second in importance to the Mozart bassoon concerto. Composed in 1811, it’s a charming work, dramatic, lyrical and joyful. 

Bassoon soloist Ben Hoadley and the orchestra gave a delightful performance of this famous work. The lyrical slow movement was particularly well played.

The Symphony No. 5 by Shostakovich was first performed in 1937 at a time when the composer was out of favour with the Soviet regime.

The success of the symphony is said to have saved the lives of the composer and his family. 

On the surface, it is lyrical and leads to a joyous finale, which pleased the regime at the time, but recent scholars point to cleverly hidden darker aspects, making it a work of exceptional depth.

The orchestra, under the baton of Louis Sharpe, gave it a thrilling performance, bringing out the extraordinary depth of emotion in the work. The beautiful largo movement was particularly sensitively played, and the orchestra played the powerful, triumphant finale superbly.