From defiance to despair: Noseda and the London Symphony Orchestra in Romantic masterworks

The Barbican’s electronic listing in its entrance hall noted the day’s meeting of the London Symphony Orchestra’s Advisory Council. I doubt, though, that it needed the Council to suggest that one way of filling the Barbican Hall was to programme two great Romantic works, one a mighty piano concerto, the other a passionate symphony.

Brahms disliked Tchaikovsky’s music, and the Russian once wrote that the German was a “giftless bastard”. But here they made a superb pair, Brahms with his first big achievement (1858), Tchaikovsky with his last (1893). While the symphony of the orchestral master took a few months to write, the young man’s concerto took years, having been a symphony and a two-piano work along the way.

Brahms’s orchestral uncertainty survives in the very opening, where the formidable first theme is given to just first violins and cellos. Why not help Brahms with a fuller rescoring? As Norman del Mar says in his book Conducting Brahms, “spare as the texture is, given a resourceful and evocative conductor... much can be made of Brahms’s scoring without retouches.” Gianandrea Noseda clearly qualifies as such, for this opening was fiery and impassioned. Now in his eighth season as the LSO’s Principal Guest Conductor, Noseda had another inspiring evening.

Soloist Simon Trpčeski showed full command of the piano part, skilfully negotiating its avowedly awkward keyboard writing. The piano’s relation to the orchestra alternates between consolation and confrontation. He managed both, but was more impressive in the former. The tremendous sense of struggle in the work, especially in its long and eventful first movement, was slightly muted on this occasion, despite some potent playing of its chromatic trills and double octaves. However, Trpčeski was fully satisfying in the subsequent movements. The Adagio was a benediction, appropriately so since the manuscript is inscribed Benedictus qui venit in nomine Domini. Whether or not that refers to the tragedy of Robert Schumann, this was affecting pianism. Trpčeski set a lively tempo in launching the finale, the élan in his playing and that of the LSO earning a heartfelt cheer from the packed house.

He dedicated his encore, Brahms’s Waltz in A flat major, Op.39 no.15 to the conductor, telling us it was a phone call “eight or nine years ago” from Noseda, suggesting he learned the Brahms First Piano Concerto, that first set him to work on it.

Tchaikovsky’s Symphony no. 6, “Pathétique’” is probably his greatest work, which he “loved best of all my musical children”. This performance was outstanding. Once the bassoon had emerged into the light at the very opening, we embarked on that paradox of tragic art – a journey we know will end in bleak despair, yet be supremely life-affirming. As the Adagio gave way to the Allegro non troppo and its agitated fugal writing, this was a roller-coaster ride of breathtakingly virtuosic orchestral playing. Noseda took seriously the absurd pppppp marking that closes the Adagio introduction, but was less respectful of that “non troppo” in the edge-of-the-seat passages,and the LSO relished the challenge.

The second movement was certainly “con grazia”; its “five-four waltz” – one wonders what Brahms the Viennese made of that – was sung with warm tone and eloquent phrasing by the cellos. The thrilling Allegro molto vivace third movement was of the calibre to bring an audience spontaneously to its feet, but Noseda kept his baton aloft commanding silence, and after the tiniest pause lowered it to start the Adagio lamentoso. The LSO strings had a magnificent night, and nowhere more so than here, right through to the fateful ebbing away of the last bars.