An evening of fantasies, rich in storytelling, languor and psychedelic dreaming began with a roistering and tender account of Berlioz’s Overture. It revealed the LSO on blistering form, Pappano drawing out formidable string discipline in the devil-may-care opening. Aside from a certain bombast, with swaggering brass and timpani, there was no absence of sensitivity in Le corsair’s poetic musing, the closing paragraph an exhilarating romp.
While a holiday in the south of France and an encounter with the work of Lord Byron had been the influence behind Le corsaire, it was the Polish symbolist writer Tadeusz Miciński whose poem ‘May Night’, an exotic evocation of fauns and naiads, is believed to have been the stimulus for Szymanowski’s discursive Violin Concerto (1916). It’s a work Lisa Batiashvili knows well (she released a recording on Deutsche Grammophon in 2022), and she brought her customary poise to its single movement span whose sumptuous scoring can sometimes feel overripe. And yet she soared serenely over the orchestra’s multi-varied textures, Pappano enabling impactful tuttis and individual colouring to be heard in all its detail, while not compromising the music’s heady opulence. Her cadenza, written for Szymanowski by his friend the Polish violinist Paweł Kochański, combined exquisite delicacy and passion, thereafter the work’s fanciful impressions, including hints of birdsong from chirping flutes, evaporated in an enigmatic close, the last whispered notes snuffed out. Batiashvili returned to the platform, and accompanied by Pappano, gave a flowing rendition of Rachmaninov’s Vocalise.
With so much rapture from Szymanowski, the Symphonie Fantastique took a while to find its way: the opium-induced hallucinations of ‘Rêveries’ just missing that essential mystery. And despite the undeniable warmth of string tone, now underpinned by eight double basses, I didn’t sense Berlioz’s fevered mind in the ensuing Allegro agitato, those delirious ‘agonies and jealous rages’ strangely absent. A sedate ‘ball’ scene, with polished harps and strings, conjured polite Parisian society, while cor anglais and oboe made companionable shepherds in the ‘Scène aux champs’. After a volcanic thunderstorm, baleful horns initiated a well-paced ‘March to the Scaffold’ (without its repeat), the whole given cinematic execution. For all the technical refinement on display, Berlioz’s diabolism in the Witch’s Sabbath felt reserved (tubular bells too distant sounding), and the final furlong dutiful rather than intoxicating.
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