Nikolai Luganksy and Carlos Miguel Prieto join the Philharmonia's superb end-of-season jamboree

There used to be a stricture against certain types of hedonistic pleasures during the months with an R, but no such constraint on those with three. So, as it is June, I could therefore indulge in the guiltless enjoyment of the Philharmonia’s end of term offer of Ravel, Rachmaninov and Respighi. And what a joy it was! The Royal Festival Hall was suffused with the fantastic glow of the orchestra’s gorgeous sound, overseen by Carlos Miguel Prieto standing in for the indisposed Santtu-Matias Rouvali, and topped-off by the wizardry of Nikolai Lugansky. On the face of it the three composers do not have much in common, except that they were all born in the 1870s and died within a few years of each other. No one could possibly mistake one for the other, a fact evidently known by Prieto whose handling of the scores met each man on his own terms and became their loyal champion.

In the Alborada del gracioso, Ravel’s superb orchestration of the fourth movement of his piano suite Miroirs, there is a jester abroad; he’s had a good breakfast but is thirsty for an amorous encounter. Giving him voice, bassoonist Richard Ion sang a lusty serenade which was rewarded with a glorious shimmer from the whole of the woodwind section, a shimmer which, were it pictorial, would have stirred the ire of Mary Whitehouse. With La Valse, Prieto showed what a suave conductor he is, and by that I do not mean merely being polite, charming or cool; his demeanour and gestures radiated a genuine passion for the piece and convinced the players to share in that passion.

I don’t know what Mrs Whitehouse would have made of Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto no. 3 in D minor whose naked passion has long been on public view. Lugansky and Prieto were complicit in staging a performance that in the first movement sailed, with evident excitement, to a land of make-believe. In the second, the piano gave itself up to the smooth murmurings of the strings, before being stirred by the realisation that life isn’t all sweetness and light with a terrific leap into the maelstrom of the last movement. Here, the chemistry between soloist, conductor and orchestra was simply stupendous; the intensity of the sound was just overpowering. At the end there was a split-second where the world stood still – before the eruption of a volcano of justly-deserved applause. The encore, Rachmaninov’s arrangement of a Tchaikovsky Lullaby, was Lugansky’s generous appreciation of that accolade.

The Philharmonia ought to perform Pini di Roma once a year; it would draw a sell-out audience. Their day at the Villa Borghese was a hoot; the fleeting visit to a Catacomb was suitably solemn and reverential; and the jaunt at the Janiculum was a fine perfumed diversion. The form of The Pines of the Appian Way is not unlike that of Boléro, a drum-driven, slow-moving stream of passion eating away at the heart. But, where Ravel collapses in an exhausted heap, Respighi enters the city-of-cities proudly bearing aloft the standard of the people: SPQR. The Roman army in its pomp must have been a vivid sight to behold and the performance Prieto drew from the orchestra attested to that in the most magnificent way. All departments were on their mettle and the brass, both on- and off-stage, glowed a burnished gold. However, top of the dispatches is the name of Antoine Siguré, the mighty timpanist who is definitely a son of Mars. He earned his salt for the rest of his life.