It is not often that the BBC Symphony Orchestra is given the opportunity to gets its teeth into a full-blooded late-romantic programme, and to demonstrate what it can achieve under an international class conductor who knows that repertory. Evgeny Svetlanov is a regular visitor to London's orchestras, but the thrill of hearing him in action never palls.
Tchaikovsky's First Symphony is uneven, but as Svetlanov demonstrated, the sheer vitality of so much of the writing far outweighs the more routine passages - only the scherzo is really sub-standard. The brass detail in the first movement was sharply etched, the woodwind counterpoints of the second lovingly shaped, and the finale - which never seems quite to know where it is going to end up - had irresistible elan.
Rachmaninov's The Bells is a choral symphony in all but name. The Edgar Allen Poe poem that it sets is the skeleton for a fully fleshed out four movement scheme. Svetlanov charted that journey from light to darkness faultlessly, always pointing up the subtleties of Rachmaninov's orchestration. The chorus without the three soloists, in the third movement, suggested that one of the influences on the menacing textures and aggressive cross rhythms could well have been Ravel's Daphnis and Chloe.
The BBC Symphony Chorus was on incisive and stirringly combative form, its basses coping well with the depths that Russian choral writing always manages to plumb. The soloists were all Russian. The tenor Daniil Shtoda, the bright young hope of the Mariinsky Theatre in St Petersburg, was the only disappointment, certainly fresh toned but underpowered against the full orchestra, and overshadowed by his far more experienced colleagues. Elena Prokina's sensuous unfolding of the second movement's evocation of golden wedding bells was the high point, with her extraordinary ability to fine down her tone to a real pianissimo while preserving perfect audibility. But Sergei Leiferkus was nearly her equal in his grave evocation of the funeral bells that provides the sombre close.
A version of this review appeared in later editions of yesterday's paper.
