Festival Music

London Symphony Orchestra

Usher Hall

Keith Bruce

Whether or not his “pantomime”, The Miraculous Mandarin, is Bela Bartok’s Rite of Spring, it is a fine partner for that piece in this concert of powerful 20th century music, and certainly equally colourful. With conductor Valery Gergiev leaning characteristically into the players of the second violins for the opening, the violas revelling in a rich early tune and the low strings having a continuing crucial role, the orchestration springs wonderful surprises throughout, beautifully executed by the LSO players. The combinations of instruments are constantly startling, none more so than a beautifully measured theme on soft trumpets and horns; the brass section was a model of control throughout.

That ability to make the quietest notes count was also evident in the playing of Bartok’s Piano Concerto No.3 by Yefim Bronfman, a big man with the most delicate touch on the keyboard and a lovely fluid articulacy on a piece full of great tunes. The central slow movement begins like a Shaker hymn with a touch of the blues – both of which Bartok likely heard in the US before he wrote it – before the horns and winds come in like a church organ accompaniment. A truly magical sound.

Stravinsky’s Rite is as perfect a way to conclude a Festival Usher Hall concert series as might be devised, and although we have heard some fabulous orchestral performances over the past three weeks, I am not sure anything quite matched this reading by Gergiev and the LSO. The precision of the huge strings ensemble when it came in after the winds intro was stunning, and although the overlapping counter rhythms and pendulum pulses that define the piece were perfectly executed, its percussive qualities never dominated a performance were every note had its full melodic value.