Fine Rachmaninov from Edward Gardner and the London Philharmonic

Sergei Rachmaninov’s Third Piano Concerto is hardly a rarity on concert programmes, but sometimes its performing tradition still seems unsettled. For some it is an integrated symphonic structure, with subtly inter-related themes and motifs recurring within and across movements. For others it is a gloriously lyrical and virtuosic display piece. Of course it is – or can be – both, but soloist and conductor need to collaborate on a shared vision they wish to present. Here Edward Gardner, Principal Conductor of the London Philharmonic Orchestra, and pianist Leif Ove Andsnes gave us an account that possessed something of both.

Andsnes’ vision of the piece is well attested by his two lauded recordings with the Oslo Philharmonic and the London Symphony Orchestra. He is definitely in the ‘symphonic’ camp, bringing out the singing line at a flowing pace of the opening principal theme, which the composer said he even imagined as being sung, but some artists make it much slower and more melancholic. Andsnes also favours the larger of the two first movement cadenza options, playing it with accumulating power and intensification, less as a separate display passage and more as a continuation of the developing musical argument.

The orchestral part is not that easy, and Rachmaninov was impressed by the instrumentalists only at his own third performance of it – but that was conducted by Mahler, whom he ever after regarded as the best of his day. Here the orchestra did not always match Andsnes’ concern for motivic detail. Thus the first two bars of the work, which sound merely prefatory but whose softly pulsating rhythm outlined by the timpani recur often later, needs better articulation at the outset than we heard. A few other moments were underplayed, but when the orchestral part soared, Gardner encouraged his players to good effect, not least in the closing pages of the finale.

Rachmaninov’s The Bells, for chorus, large orchestra and three soloists – thus expensive, so rarely done here – is based on Balmont’s Russian translation of Edgar Allan Poe’s poem, an account of life’s journey symbolised by sleigh bells, wedding bells, alarm bells and funeral bells. The tenor, soprano, and baritone never sing together for they are each deployed solo respectively in the first, second, and fourth movements, the third movement being purely choral. Dmytro Popov was the fine tenor, who, after the tinkling of sleigh bells launched the work with his soft “Listen” on a long high E flat, before the chorus thundered its fortissimo reply as we began our sleigh ride. Its radiant climax was splendidly affirmed by the London Philharmonic Choir, though the rather overwhelmed Popov might have wished it better balanced. 

Soprano Kristina Mkhitaryan, Tatyana in the new Eugene Onegin at Covent Garden, sang just as well here. The second movement sings of the “holy call to marriage of golden bells” and certainly Mkhitaryan was golden-toned in her rapturous solo. The choir despatched a thrilling third movement Presto invoking the alarm bells, and bass-baritone Kostas Smoriginas was haunting in his evocation of the final movement’s funeral bells. Then Gardner capped his fine account of this neglected masterwork with the orchestra’s unexpectedly serene postlude, which was infinitely consoling.