Raising the spirits: Isabelle Faust, Duncan Ward and the London Symphony Orchestra

An unhackneyed programme of colourful works proved to be a refreshing introduction to the musical world of conductor, Duncan Ward, and with a very responsive London Symphony Orchestra, developing into an evening to raise the spirits.

Bartók’s Violin Concerto no. 1 began proceedings, with the intelligent and thoughtful presence of Isabelle Faust trying her considerable best to mould this somewhat unformed work into something convincing. Written in the heat of unreciprocated love, it was abandoned on completion, at roughly the same time as the composer was dumped. One feels that if he’d prepared the work for performance he would have made significant changes. In the intense Andante sostenuto opening, the interplay between Faust and the LSO was impressive and Ward held together the threads of material. In the fractured Allegro giocoso that follows, he faced a harder task, but both he and Faust were totally committed.

Janáček’s Taras Bulba, is another piece that can seem disjointed in the wrong hands. Recounting three gruesome stories of death and war, the wide range of thematic material is knitted together in a way only Janáček could conceive. Ward understood the balance required between holding onto the odd structure and being full blooded and dramatic. The wonderful range of colours and moods was presented to us in all its spontaneous glory and when the final section of the work opened out into a glorious unfettered major key, the effect was ecstatic, reminiscent of the final passage in Jenůfa. 

Faust returned to the podium to glow in the once popular Poème by Chausson. The heady mix of Massenet, Franck and early Debussy sounded inspired and coherent in her hands. She found just the right notes of pre-Raphaelite chasteness and humane warmth. Again, Ward seemed to have an innate understanding of the structure of the 18-minute work and drew out a full rich sound from the LSO. A cracker of a performance of a work that should see the light of day more often.

But it was in the performance of Debussy’s La Mer that Ward and the LSO found another level. In a work that is notoriously hard to fully do justice to, the imperative is to find the balance between the poetic or ‘impressionistic’ without diluting the full excitement of Debussy's superb orchestral writing. Ward pressed all the right buttons and appeared to have the LSO totally in his thrall. The wonderful ‘noon’ passage at the end of De l'aube à midi sur la mer has never sounded more thrilling and mysterious, while the palpable image of splashing waves in Jeux de vagues, was breathtaking. In the Dialogue du vent et de la mer, the sense of the danger and power of the sea was especially vivid, leading to glorious and satisfying final flourish. A benchmark performance of a much loved masterpiece.