A curious programme with which to bring down the curtain on a successful season. Vasily Petrenko began with one of his well-intended homilies, promising us an evening of extremes but trailing off into unintelligibility when it came to explaining the contrasting ways in which his featured Russians processed the world. Elucidating categories of perception in fractured English was not such a good idea – perhaps someone needs to have a word? Not that the music-making itself was always wholly top-notch this time.
Some in the audience were present primarily to hear the newish work by Joe Hisaishi, the eclectic septuagenarian best known for his work with Studio Ghibli, the legendary Japanese animation studio. He is increasingly making waves as a composer and conductor in the concert hall and has already released a selection of his film music directing the RPO. Currently the orchestra’s Composer-in-Association, his burgeoning Deutsche Grammophon catalogue includes the music of Steve Reich as well as his own, which gives fair warning of the pared-down idiom to be found in parts of the triple horn concerto, The Border, given its UK premiere tonight. Movement I (Crossing Lines) majors on driving rhythms and their displacement like a hornier companion piece to John Adams’s Shaker Loops. What it lacks is a comparable sense of direction – and any kind of foreground. Movement II (The Scaling) is more introspective, beginning with a threadbare line for solo horn but then decking out the idea with childlike grace. The two remaining soloists sing into their mouthpieces and are joined by pizzicato strings. While I didn’t find the passage all that magical it exemplified the delicate craft associated with his output for other media. The finale is again bustling and minimalist, like a shard of Adams’s Lollapalooza stuck on repeat. The programme notes referred to ‘glimmers of West Side Story’. If present that connection was certainly not melodic. Hard to say whether a tighter performance could have made a difference.
The concert began with a fine if unsensational account of Rachmaninov’s tone poem. Where some recent performers have taken a decidedly frisky view of the piece, Petrenko was sluggish or at least doomier at the start, almost in the manner of Yevgeny Svetlanov (whose old orchestra he briefly helmed before holding posts simultaneously in Moscow and London became untenable). While its 5/4 metre was clear enough, the journey felt smoothed over despite the plentiful pointillist details of scoring unearthed. That the music took so long to rise to heights of passion may be down to the composer. No doubt he wanted a big dramatic contrast but something didn’t quite gel.
By contrast, in terms of flow and clarity Scriabin’s ‘Divine Poem’ was a triumph, all sections of the orchestra finding their very best form. But what a strange concoction it is: stop-start, four-square and overblown. Hard to fault the conductor’s way with a score to which he must be devoted (it is regarded as a seminal piece in the development of modern Russian music and he recorded it in Oslo a decade ago.) Finding an orderly route through its sprawling three-movement structure again meant avoiding too much too soon. Only this time it worked. Petrenko was as ever elegant to watch, even in the wildest moments, and along the way there was plenty to wonder at. Leader Duncan Riddell shone sweetly in the serial sequences of Wagnerian forest murmuring. Two harps plashed suitably and there were, I think, nine horns all told, firm and focused. The refinement was as impressive as the noise. Petrenko’s fans were on their feet at the end. Several of Hisaishi’s had left some time before.
