In one of the classic stories of the 19th-century virtuosi, Pablo de Sarasate refused to play the Brahms Violin Concerto on the basis that the only melody in the slow movement was given to the oboe, rather than the soloist. Times change, and Thursday night’s virtuoso soloist Janine Jansen not only seemed all too happy to perform the piece with the London Symphony Orchestra, but even went so far, after it was over, as to hand over her bouquet of flowers to the excellent oboe soloist John Anderson.
While this was a particularly gracious gesture, it was also representative of the collaborative spirit underlying the whole performance. Jansen seemed in a trance throughout, listening deeply to the orchestra when not playing; the orchestra, for their part, could hardly have been more alert, or indeed more thoroughly Brahmsian in the sound they produced, playing with extreme strength and depth that was somehow never overblown. Sir Antonio Pappano may be better known in London for his work in the opera house, but there is zero doubt that he knows precisely how Brahms’ music works, and how to extract the very finest Brahms performance from an orchestra. Maybe Brahms should have written an opera, after all.
The whole concerto glowed. Jansen was a marvel. You hardly look at her and think of Brahms, the gruff, bearded bachelor, but she projected a sense of kinship with every note she played. And she combined with the orchestra uncommonly well, together spinning a single melodic thread throughout the whole first movement, her sound crisp and songlike, the orchestra’s ever-changing – one moment they were full of the bustle and bluster of Brahms’ symphonies; the next, the strings were plucking an accompaniment with the delicacy of an acoustic guitar. Pappano jumped up and down and waved his arms about like a maniac, but somehow the resulting sound was incredibly precise. I got the impression – not always the case with the LSO under certain other conductors – that this performance had been prepared with great diligence.
It was much the same in Walton’s First Symphony: all passion and flailing on the podium, but in the service of producing something both carefully planned and stirringly realised. Pappano seemed to take the second movement’s initial instruction “With malice” very much to heart, in the finale as much as in the Scherzo: his players were brisk and fierce in both, and he seemed to goad the brass on, to great effect. After both of these movements he recoiled from the front of the podium sweating, resting on the rail at the back, arms laid out to the side, like a boxer.