After a two-decade tenure in the pit at Covent Garden, Antonio Pappano officially took over the podium of the London Symphony Orchestra last fall. One of his first official acts as leader was to schedule a short tour of the United States, which concluded at Carnegie Hall. It proved a poignant capstone for two reasons: it was the LSO’s first appearance there in more than 20 years, and it represented a homecoming for Sir Tony to the city where he cut his teeth as a young répétiteur, before becoming an international conducting superstar. He came determined to show the New York audience what they’d been missing.
The first concert of the outfit’s two-night stand fused one of Pappano’s specialties, the music of American composers, with a classic of the Austro-German repertoire favored by his LSO predecessor, Simon Rattle. The prolific, long-lived George Walker (1922-2018) completed Sinfonia no. 5, “Visions” in 2016, his last major contribution before his death at age 96. The 15-minute work features many of Walker’s hallmarks, including dense tone clusters for the piano (the composer himself being a renowned soloist), artful reworking of spiritual melodies and complex themes that fuse together rather than resolve. The piece’s insistent tone seems to reflect Walker’s feelings of mortality and his anguish over the murder of Black parishioners at the Emanuel African Methodist Church in 2015, which weighed heavily on his mind during its composition.
Under Pappano’s propulsive direction, the LSO players gave voice to the gravity of Walker’s agitated musical world. A thick bed of strings underpinned the zestful solo contributions from brass, woodwind and percussion sections. The insistent rhythms of xylophone, marimba and timpani infused the work with a feeling of unbroken tension, and bright blasts from trumpet and horn mimicked anguished cries in the dark. Still, the peaceful visions evoked by the piece’s title emerged here and there: a lovely solo passage for flute, a gentle harmony traded among the violin and lower strings. The LSO masterfully handled the dichotomy between hopefulness and resignation embedded in the music, working up relentlessly to the conclusion.