Cymbal crashes start partway through the first movement of Ralph Vaughan Williams’s Symphony No 9 and just keep on coming. Solos meander – violin, flugelhorn, cor anglais – as spare and cool as a modernist line drawing. Three saxophones flit about, accompanied by shivers of snare drum. The brass land in heavy blocks. There are only fleeting glimpses of the pastoral, Pimm’s-by-the-cricket Vaughan Williams of his best-known earlier works. Premiered in 1958, months before his death aged 85, the composer’s final symphony is an unmistakably postwar affair.
Under chief conductor Antonio Pappano, the LSO’s performance was by turn ferocious and almost unearthly in its hushed moments. Climaxes were served loud – brass gritty, strings tearing through full bows. Martial rhythms were clipped, tautly disciplined. Even the lively Scherzo had a nastiness redolent of Shostakovich’s grimly ironic passages. But this performance’s real power lay in Pappano’s willingness to hold back, to expose raw sinew beneath the bombast. The second movement faded to nothing, the conductor’s hands barely visible under his music stand; the close of the finale saw him drive the orchestra to the limits of audibility and back again in a masterclass in dynamic control. The capacity audience was briefly stilled, not a mid-December cough to be heard.
That the concert had sold out was presumably thanks to Elgar’s Cello Concerto – perennially popular in a way Vaughan Williams’s later symphonies have never been. Reversing the order of an otherwise conventional orchestral programme to place the concerto after the interval may have ensured better attendance overall, but as a result of Vaughan Williams’s brutal incision, Elgar’s concerto sounded toothless. David Cohen – the LSO’s own principal cello – blended beautifully with his colleagues but struggled to stand out as a soloist, even as Pappano kept the orchestra tamped down.
Bax’s Tintagel, the programme’s short final work, was another matter. Once again, this was orchestral playing in high-definition: from the bloom of luminosity in the opening bars to harsh shimmers of string tremolo and skeins of fine-spun lyricism. Pappano jumped to land one especially forceful entry with both feet. Climaxes were effortful, hard-won, the musical stakes kept sky-high.
