Spare a thought for Alexander Borodin, full-time chemist, part-time composer. His music doesn’t get programmed much these days. As orchestras carpet their seasons with wall-to-wall Mahler and Bruckner symphonies (clocking up over 700 performances between them last year according to Bachtrack’s 2025 data), Borodin’s Second Symphony got rolled out just seven times (zero performances of his First or Third). So bravo to the London Symphony Orchestra and Gianandrea Noseda for taking up the cause.
Borodin was a great melodist – Robert Wright and George Forrest raided his back catalogue for their 1953 musical, Kismet – and the Second Symphony is stuffed with musical sweetmeats. Noseda has a distinct affinity for Russian music and, conducting from a tiny Eulenburg study score, he whipped through the ominous fate motif like a whipcrack. The first movement was propulsive and high on adrenalin, if containing a few sharp gear shifts. The garrulous Scherzo tested the mettle of the woodwinds, gossiping merrily, before the highlight, the moonlit Andante featuring gorgeous clarinet and horn solos (Sérgio Pires and Timothy Jones respectively). The LSO strings sounded gloriously rich and sonorous here, as well they might with nine double basses (outnumbering the cellos).
The finale, an energetic tune that wouldn’t go amiss in Borodin’s Polovtsian Dances, was dispatched exuberantly. At times Noseda’s tempi bordered on the breathless – they rattled through the whole symphony in just 26 minutes – but with such invigorating material, one can understand them getting caught up in the excitement.
The Borodin was certainly more unbuttoned than the concert’s first half, which opened with the Divertimento from The Fairy’s Kiss, Stravinsky’s affectionate reworking of Tchaikovsky into a ballet based on Hans Christian Andersen. It’s tempting to play ‘spot the quotation’ – there’s Tchaikovsky’s hit song, None but the Lonely Heart, and ballet fans would doubtless recognise the Feuillet d’album from its appearance in John Cranko’s Onegin – but most of the snippets are seldom heard piano miniatures and Stravinsky weaves them so skilfully, he makes them his own. Threading his baton as if sewing, Noseda’s taut, unsentimental reading emphasised Stravinsky’s fingerprints; the Danses suisses almost sounding like the Shrovetide Fair from Petrushka.
Restraint was also the watchword for Seong-Jin Cho’s glowing account of Chopin’s Second Piano Concerto. The South Korean pianist isn’t given to overblown emotions and his cool classicism and pristine fingerwork suited Chopin’s testing score wonderfully, although the LSO’s boisterous contributions to the first movement occasionally seemed ill-matched. The Larghetto was poetic but flowing, Cho leaning into the keyboard for the dramatic central recitative. The mazurka dance rhythms of the Allegro vivace finale were crisply dispatched, as were the bouncing string spiccatos. Further poetry came in the wistful Chopin waltz encore (Op.70 no.2). Cho and Noseda take this concerto on tour to Spain this week, where Borodin 2 will also enjoy further outings in Valencia and Seville. The Campaign for More Borodin starts here!
