It would be pardonable in the circumstances to expect some lapses and some tentativeness in an entirely unrehearsed performance, but what we heard was an astonishingly confident and technically perfect delivery of the solo part and completely assured playing by the LSO, with Noseda following his soloist and guiding his orchestral forces unerringly, even when Simovic introduced some unusually marked variations of tempo in the last movement, which he took at an excitingly fast pace.
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Iron rhythmic control, a no-slow policy for treacherous passages that tax even the greatest and a real sense of cumulative energy meant the finale was the perfect blend of intellect, emotion and excitement.
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Noseda was supremely responsive to Simovic, the LSO responding in kind, engaging with the bravado of their colleague suddenly in the spotlight. Simovic’s playing of the middle movement was as lyrical and as reflective as one could wish for.
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It was nonetheless a sometimes electrifying and for many deeply affecting experience – looking around at the closing, swelling heights of the piece, many had been brought to tears.
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Scriabin’s Poem of Ecstasy benefited from admirable clarity and a fine balance between the vertical and horizontal.
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The rest of the evening was more conventional – an LSO programme conducted by François-Xavier Roth that ended with a diaphanous account of Scriabin’s Poem of Ecstasy with exactly the slow-burn quality the piece needs
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I hadn’t expected to be so engrossed in what at first seemed another modernist experiment. But – and thanks considerably to Roth’s insightful, Boulezianly decisive conducting (though at one climactic point he leapt into the air in true Bernsteinian fashion) — I floated in an aural ecstasy.
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The final hurrah was Scriabin’s purple-hued Poem of Ecstasy, beautifully controlled by Roth and the LSO’s coruscating woodwind until David Elton’s trumpet finally let rip and a flood of sound was unleashed.
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Noseda and the LSO met him more than halfway in a magnificent performance that made the brilliant scoring sizzle with life and played up the work’s emotional strengths and ambiguities.
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Boldly going where (almost) no orchestra has gone before, the London Symphony Orchestra last night shattered the concert format in the most thrilling and enjoyably anarchic way.
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The LSO was on pungent form, tucking into Shostakovich’s youthful score with relish.
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Then Haitink stood up, his left hand supplementing his vigorous right-hand beat, with detailed gestures to the orchestra to enhance expression. If anything, this gloriously vivid and vigorous performance was even more edgy than that recording from 1968. At 90, Bernard Haitink is still at the top of his game. Amazing.
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