Perhaps unfairly, Prokofiev has not gone down in history as one of the 20th century's great humanists. His First Violin Concerto dates from 1917, right in the middle of the first world war, and yet it is one of his most radiant and serene works. To programme it with Carl Nielsen's Fifth Symphony, written only five years later, drives the point home. Nielsen's vivid depiction of humanity under threat has retained all of its power to shatter and inspire.
Whatever Prokofiev's attitude to the war, it would be absurdly ungrateful to resent the concerto's delicate beauty. Its tremulous, iridescent opening shimmered magically into life in Thomas Zehetmair's hands, with the Hallé responding sensitively to every nuance. Under Mark Elder's expert guidance, Zehetmair's pliable phrasing was echoed sympathetically by the orchestra throughout the concerto. They all handled the piece's darker, spiky, even sinister side with a lightness of touch that demonstrated complete empathy with Prokofiev's strange, bittersweet tone.
Giya Kancheli's... à la Duduki, which was sandwiched between the Prokofiev and the Nielsen, is a haunting evocation of ethnic Georgian music. Kancheli's work, which has been slowly making its way into western concert programmes and CD catalogues in the past 10 years, juxtaposes slow-moving, ethereal passages with outbursts of ritualistic violence, and... à la Duduki is no exception. The structure may be formulaic, but the piece's strange power is undeniable. The Hallé sounded entirely at home in Kancheli's enchanted soundscape; the final valedictory pages were distinguished by John MacMurray's hauntingly beautiful trumpet solo.
In its own way, Nielsen's Fifth Symphony plays on a positive-negative opposition as stark as Kancheli's. The theatricality of its first movement, where the forces of evil are represented by a violent side-drum solo, and the forces of good in a chorale, could so easily degenerate into cliche. But somehow it never does, and in a performance as superbly paced as this one, its impact is overwhelming.
