In its third and final Sydney appearance, three short compositions formed the first half of the London Symphony Orchestra’s performance, conducted by its Music Director, Sir Simon Rattle. Beginning with the overture to Schumann’s only opera, Genoveva, they impressed immediately by allowing every phrase to breathe with refreshingly natural freedom. Instrumental colours and dynamics were varied with pellucid grace, while always corresponding to Schumann’s instructions in the score. Rather than being a bland opener, this composition with its often-critiqued orchestration blossomed into a memorable musical experience.
Next came Daniel Kidane's Sun Poem, an ambitious essay of grief and time for substantial orchestral forces, describing past losses and future gains in life, supported by excellent ensemble playing of great precision. There are many conductors of international renown whose beat is famously hard to fathom, let alone to follow. Rattle represents quite the opposite end of the spectrum; it is “part of the job” for him to give meticulous indications about entries and complex rhythmic structures and then in turn expecting his orchestra to follow them, as they impeccably did.
Igor Stravinsky’s “short orchestral fantasy”, as he referred to his Feu d'artifice (Fireworks) is an astonishingly accomplished work for a young composer at the beginning of his career. A harbinger of his later masterworks, it never fails to impress with its rhythmic, tonal and atmospheric variety. The LSO played it with virtuosic elegance, although perhaps without as many personal touches as they added in the case of the Schumann overture.
The main course in this sonic feast was certainly the Symphony no. 7 in E major by Anton Bruckner, in a version that Australian audiences experienced for the very first time, as the LSO played from the 2015 Bruckner Critical Edition edited by Benjamin-Gunnar Cohrs. Rattle conducted the 70-minute work without a score and the symbiotic relationship between his gestures and his players' constant reaction to them resulted in a breathtakingly moving performance.
The treatment of time and, in particular, the way expressive details became emphasised with a slight lengthening of certain notes or phrases (musicians call it agogic) allowed the long Brucknerian melodies to flow effortlessly. In Rattle’s artistic toolbox, there was room for not one or two types of loud sounds but for a dozen different forte effects, and the kaleidoscopic variety of sonorities made the evening spellbinding, whether it was the soaring but never overplayed cello melodies in the first movement’s exposition or the deep resonance of the Wagner tubas in the Adagio’s theme. The latter truly reflected the composer’s heartbreaking premonition; indeed, Wagner died while Bruckner worked on the symphony. Pulse and volume seemed inevitably to intensify until the famous cymbal crash bringing utter Weltschmerz to this epic narrative.
The sound of the LSO brass section was warm, rounded and consistently velvety, supported by delicate woodwinds. The solo trumpet reflected the exquisite pianissimo ostinato at the beginning of the Scherzo, with the most graceful, softest figure (repeated countless times later in the movement) I have ever heard. The diaphanous violin theme opening the last movement was well offset by the frightening fortissimo later, where the whole orchestra played the same A minor fragment in unison.
In his brief comments to the audience before the encore, Rattle, witty and to the point as ever, noted the joy of playing in the much-improved Concert Hall after the recent renovation works, adding “surely, there is a message in that”. His exceptional orchestra has been waiting for a hall worthy of their achievements for a long time.
