Lucid and magical: Rattle and the LSO surpass themselves

Over the years I remember only a handful of concerts where I felt a genuine sense of occasion and of heightened creativity. A good number of these involved Sir Simon Rattle. I recall one concert by a local authority school’s orchestra which involved a heroic slog through Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony and then Ratlle guest conducted (his children were at school locally) the overture to Gershwin’s Strike up the Band as an encore. On a single rehearsal, the difference in confidence and enthusiasm, let alone the number of correct notes, was breathtaking. In that moment it was obvious to me what power such a great conductor can wield over musicians of all levels. This concert was another of those occasions, fittingly so as it was part of the London Symphony Orchestra’s celebrations for Rattle’s 70th birthday.

Rattle kicked off with a wonderfully lucid and magical account of Tippett’s Ritual Dances from The Midsummer Marriage. Rattle’s control of structure through tempo and dynamic relationships was very impressive. The final Fire in summer was the powerful apotheosis it was intended to be, and the magical closing bars were perfectly brought off. The LSO were unanimously on top form, with particularly fine playing from the woodwinds.

Mark-Anthony Turnage and Rattle have enjoyed a very fruitful and productive creative relationship, with numerous commissions coming the composer’s way. The latest, Sco – Guitar Concerto, received its world premiere. Written for renowned jazz guitarist John Scofield, who Turnage has collaborated with before, it successfully melded the jazz idiom with Turnage’s own clean cut post-modernist style. In this work Turnage had left some of the solo part only partially written out to enable Scofield to improvise as much as possible. Its five movements are varied in mood and texture, the fourth, Aria, being a touching memorial for his son, Evan Scofield, who died tragically some years ago. The long cadenza that ended that movement was particularly touching, as if you could see the father remembering his son through the notes, sometimes hesitant, sometimes emotional. The rumbustious finale rounded off what was an interesting and entertaining musical experience.

I wonder if Rattle has now regretted how little time he has dedicated to the music of Vaughan Williams over the years. The evidence from his interpretation of the Fifth Symphony was that Rattle has a natural affinity for the underlying emotional power of the composer’s style. The opening tempo achieved an urgency within a few bars, which developed through the series of passionate climaxes before fading out into tonal ambivalence. The Scherzo was very fast, demonstrating the technical brilliance of the LSO, with tricky passagework for strings and woodwinds – the result was thrilling. 

The Romanza is a movement of great beauty, with a sublime ending, but the middle section is shot through with passion and anxiety, which Rattle didn’t shy away from. The finale is the hardest movement to bring off, coming back down to earth after the Romanza. Here, however, it was spot on with Rattle driving forward, bringing out the full drama. The glorious arrival of the key of D major in the rapturously played coda, gently confirmed that this had been the goal of the whole work all along. Rattle’s performance was not just a beatific antidote to the war that was raging when the work was written, but a deeply satisfying work of passion and doubts, as well as beauty.