Thursday, September 18, 2025
Barbican Hall, London
Having opened the new season with the Third Symphonies of Bernstein (‘Kaddish’) and Copland, the latter played again early evening yesterday, Sir Antonio and the LSO coupled two further such works here, beginning with the compact five-movement Ninth of Shostakovich, not the bells-and-whistles, end-of-WWII extravaganza that the authorities expected (or indeed the composer had indicated would emerge from his pen), rather a listen-between-the-lines, skittish, divertimento-like opus – whimsical, ironic, edgy, with any comedy leaning towards the black – premiered in Leningrad in November 1945 conducted by Mravinsky. The clownish first movement with buffooning trombone was brought off with precision, suggestive of a maniacal circus ringmaster, Stalin maybe. Shadows and solitude came to the fore in the Moderato second, the following Presto releasing panic-stricken measures and a high degree of LSO virtuosity before being stopped suddenly by tyrannical brass, against which Rachel Gough’s bassoon resisted suppression, able to lead-off the Finale that here sounded sarcastic, becoming frenzied by the end, nicely duplicitous. So, what’s it all about, Dmitri?
Next! Seong-Jin Cho playing Prokofiev’s Second Piano Concerto… fantastically well, yet more than a showcase of technical brilliance, if that too, such as an unflinching traversal of the lavish/wild first-movement cadenza – rather like climbing Everest to a dissonant peak – then a non-stop second movement, a punchy third, and a tour de force of a Finale including a shapely folksong interlude; in reprising the opening material the performers crusaded to the finishing post – the LSO complementary to the pianist, as throughout – both landing on the ultimate chord unanimously. For a gentle and delectable encore, Cho offered Ravel’s À la manière de Borodine.
The Case of Beethoven’s Fifth, as Doctor Watson might have chronicled one of Sherlock Holmes’s adventures. The Baker Street detective could have said it was elementary, that the familiar had been freshened, the music trusted, with no need for novelty; rather, it was well-judged tempos, with repeats in outer movements, excellent playing, the Finale striding grandly to triumph, arrowed to C-major light.
Symphonies are stampeding from the LSO at present, Shostakovich Ten due at the Barbican very soon, that together with tonight’s pair, and the Copland, about to travel on a ‘tour with Tony’ from Paris to Hanoi. Recordings of Pappano conducting Vaughan Williams’s Fifth & Ninth Symphonies are imminent on LSO Live.
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Postscript: on Tuesday just gone, Sept.16, Radio 3 broadcast a recital recorded at this year’s Edinburgh Festival in Queen’s Hall, during which Antonio Pappano conducted himself with distinction as pianist to accompany Ian Bostridge in Britten and Vaughan Williams, the latter’s On Wenlock Edge with four LSO string-players, and they and Pappano then essayed Elgar’s expansive Piano Quintet, with its poignant slow movement. Well-worth catching…
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002j69l