The London Symphony Orchestra’s musicians were in fine form and their playing was focussed and controlled through to – and beyond – an astonishing fortissimo that Strauss puts in around halfway. Praise to all the players, and especially to the leader Roman Simovic’s delicate solos.
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The LSO strings brought rich tone to it, heightened by nostalgic wartime angst.
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The concert did not disappoint and was a fabulous triumph – it has to be one of the undoubted highlights of the UK-India Year of Culture.
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The vocal soloists – tenor Simon O’Neill and baritone Christian Gerhaher – vividly incarnated the two sides of the emotional coin, while the instrumental soloists of the LSO under Rattle’s direction put up a dazzling firework display.
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Pappano and his superb players shaped it all with love.
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...a magnificent final climax, and suitably throbbing basses in the conclusion, leading to a coda of utter despair and most telling silence.
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Very much the protagonist in the dialogue with orchestra, she displayed staggering power while sustaining tonal depth. Her rock-solid technique, mixing spitfire virtuosity with extreme delicacy, allowed her to shape the work into something more than merely a showpiece.
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The LSO’s playing was magnificent – the woodwind solos offering a compulsive, abandoned lyricism and the brass from its first entry was electrifying.
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Pappano and the LSO were unstinting in their support, to the evident enjoyment of Ott, who responded to the enthusiastic applause with an appealing, if not ideally poised, rendition of Chopin's C-sharp minor Nocturne (Op.posth.).
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Znaider’s amicable and free-roaming gestures facing the LSO, whose string players were standing up, epitomized the congenial intimacy conceived of Mozart's concertos.
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Ott's devil wore an impish grin, the pianist exchanging gleeful smiles over her shoulder with leader Carmine Lauri, and she caressed the quieter moments, enveloping the score in rippled silk. Pappano and the LSO were devilish accomplices, leering horns, sinuous clarinets and col legno string slaps and spiccato effects rattling like skeletons.
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Bharat suited last night’s dignified occasion, but the closing Fantasy on Vedic Chants, also by Subramaniam, is the piece to be heard more often in the repertoire.
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Pappano and the LSO probed the complex textures with subtle elegance in a performance that was refined and rapt in its beauty.
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