This stimulating and illuminating concert – given on June 2, 2022, in the Barbican Hall, and broadcast June 30 at 7.30 p.m. – commenced with a pair of Canzone by Giovanni Gabrieli (mid-1550s-1612), LSO trumpets and trombones in immaculate form for stirring pieces inspired by St Mark’s Venice. Then a timbral contrast with (also Venetian) Vivaldi’s B-minor Concerto for Four Violins, with LSO first-desk players as close-knit soloists for invigorating outer movements and a fantasia-like middle one.
Fast-forward to 1955 for the long-lived Goffredo Petrassi’s Concerto for Orchestra No.5 (he composed eight such works), this one written for the Boston Symphony Orchestra and Charles Munch. The shadowy opening perhaps finds Petrassi (1904-2003) consciously recalling Bartók’s also-Boston example if soon developing its own appeal, a mix of impressionism, rhythmic vitality, expressionism, drama and (Hindemith’s rather than Stravinsky’s brand of) neoclassicism, using a large orchestra with finesse and climactic intensity to sustain twenty-five minutes of, firstly, developed music of different characters, and, secondly, scored in such a way as to beguile the ear with quick-change colours and contrasts, with a full-circle return to darkness.
Then spool back to the rear end of the nineteenth-century for one of Puccini’s earliest works, Capriccio sinfonico, the composer’s theatrical instincts already in place – verismo, of course, just add voices – and, for several bars, a preview of how La bohème would start a decade and more later. Finally, and not only a football club, Juventus (Youth, 1919) by a celebrated conductor, Victor de Sabata (1892-1967), music of exuberance, in the manner of Strauss’s Don Juan, and cinematic orchestration, richly melodic, in kinship with Korngold, if sometimes bittersweet/autumnal, a reminder that life doesn’t always sustain its energetic/carefree promise, although de Sabata, on the right side of thirty at the time, ends Juventus in optimistic cheerleading style.
Come September 2024, when Tony Pappano takes up the LSO reins, http://www.colinscolumn.com/london-symphony-orchestra-appoints-sir-antonio-pappano-as-its-chief-conductor/, if programmes of this adventurousness and performances of this quality are to be standard, then great times lay ahead.
Maybe the current collection can become an LSO Live release to follow this, http://www.colinscolumn.com/antonio-pappano-records-vaughan-williamss-symphonies-4-6-for-lso-live/?