Charisma and colour from Vasily Petrenko and the Royal Philharmonic at the Proms

Under the charismatic leadership of Vasily Petrenko, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra haven’t sounded so lithe and alert for many a year. Sunday's Prom was an ideal opportunity to demonstrate their strengths. Particularly notable was the characterful woodwind playing, with exceptional solos in all three works on the programme.

Respighi’s Pines of Rome is the second of his Roman trilogy about the city’s beauty and its history. The greatest of the three, it was presented theatrically in this performance. The playfulness of the opening section was spot on rhythmically and the grand catacombs setting of the second movement saw the blazing RPO brass in their full glory. The beautiful evocation of the of the Janiculum Hill was distinguished by a first-rate clarinet solo from Katharine Lacy, accompanied by a resonant nightingale, and the final march, complete with additional heft from the organ, was as awe-inspiring as it was intended to be.

Darius Milhaud has all but disappeared from the concert hall, so it was good that his early masterpiece Le Bœuf sur le toit was heard at the Proms. Usually performed in its original, purely orchestral, version, we heard it in the version with a violin soloist. The downside of this addition is that some of the piquant polytonal woodwind writing is lost to the soloist and is less audible as a result. Arabella Steinbacher did not produce an incisive enough tone to make her presence felt here, especially in the early stages, only really finding the edge needed after she had traversed the fiendish difficulties of the cadenza written by Arthur Honegger. Likewise, the performance as a whole seemed to galvanise in these last minutes, whereas earlier it had lacked swing and was rhythmically loose.

It’s always good to hear foreign conductors take on Vaughan Williams. Petrenko’s choice of A London Symphony is a natural one, with his penchant for lush Russian scores and the colours of French repertoire. This symphony is the most glamorous of all Vaughan Williams’ works, with Ravelian orchestral precision and colour and a move away from anything resembling Elgar or VW’s teachers, Stanford and Parry.   

From the off it felt that Petrenko understood the idiom, allowing the opening to unfold at its own pace, and when the violent discords burst in at the start of the Allegro, he was not shy at emphasising the harshness of tone. The tempo was refreshingly brisk in the Allegro and the coda, one of the composer’s most thrilling passages, was whipped up into a frenzy. The Lento was also beautifully done, with the atmosphere of Bloomsbury Square in foggy November evoked and the lovers’ tryst climax given heart-on-sleeve passion. The tempo of the nocturnal Scherzo was ideal and the veiled orchestral coloration was nicely achieved by the orchestra’s alertness. The finale, which needs careful shaping structurally, was handled excellently by Petrenko. After the fierceness of the opening bars, the march had a funereal pace, which contrasted well with the fast Allegro middle section. The return of the march, leading to the final apocalyptic climax, was very powerful. The best performances leave the listener with a sense that something has been shattered and the world will never be the same again. First performed weeks before the First World War, Vaughan Williams’ prescience seems relevant to where we stand today, teetering on the edge in our own time.