Rattle has the ability to draw us in to such an epic score and time seemed suspended for half an hour as Birtwistle’s imagination seeped into ours.
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The London Symphony Orchestra under Simon Rattle’s direction give this three-movement work everything they’ve got
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Five movements passed so dreamily that I would have happily heard at least one of them again.
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It’s a score that perfectly suits Rattle’s ability to focus musical energy with pinpoint accuracy, and the LSO responded with a performance of irresistible immediacy, just as they had laid out the intricacies of The Shadow of Night with astonishing clarity.
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The central sentimental Adagio around which the five-movement structure hinges was warm and well-drawn without being saccharine; its wind and brass chorales committed and open-hearted, with particularly fine playing from the LSO horn section.
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The sharp slap of percussion, the mocking trombones, yawning bassoons, grazing, pinching, winking strings and swooning waltzes were impeccably balanced and shaped by Roth.
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... the quiet gossamer silkiness of the first violins was special, and getting the two trombones to stand in the closing pages for ‘Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean’, their ffff blaze cutting through the texture, was a nice bit of Mahlerian theatre.
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I’ve been lucky enough to be on the receiving end of some outstanding music-making from the LSO, but this Ravel evening was in a league of its own, playing to any number of strengths.
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With an unrehearsed — but outstanding — orchestra and a talent of his own that took the breath away (he played from memory), the sort of spontaneous recreation of a score so lacking in the week’s previous concerto renderings was gloriously enabled.
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The LSO achieved a shattering climax, and was rightly rewarded by highly enthusiastic applause and shouts from the audience.
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Noseda’s intense, searching, stylish realisation seemed, as I imagined it, pregnant with those 14 future symphonies, stretching in my mind’s eye like the future Scottish kings in Act IV of Macbeth.
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... at the Barbican the LSO under Mark Elder played the Second Symphony with more ebullience than any of Ives’s American proselytisers.
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With gleaming tone and wonderful musicality, the Ukrainian violinist sailed through the concerto’s virtuosic writing. The woodwind lines in the bittersweet Canzonetta were beautifully shaped, and Noseda whipped up irresistible energy in the finale.
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