Viola player Antoine Tamestit opened his ‘Artist Portrait’ series with the London Symphony Orchestra with Martinů’s beautiful, yet curiously underplayed, Rhapsody-Concerto. Perhaps hyphenated titles are discouraging (“make your mind up”). But here it was balanced ideally between rhapsodic lyricism and concertante sparring between orchestra and soloist. Advocacy as eloquent as this might rehabilitate the work itself.
The soloist’s tone and phrasing, on a fine instrument, was alluring from the outset, with a rich singing quality in the first movement. This songful quality lit up the second movement’s Bohemian tune, followed by virtuoso flair in the brief but dazzling cadenza. The LSO strings have never sounded as warm and full as when opening the piece and in the many later tuttis. The molto tranquillo coda made a poignant envoi. Hans Keller wrote a mischievously provocative essay on “Phoney Professions”, listing both viola players (“it’s just a big violin”) and conductors among his targets. This performance refuted him as surely as it delighted everyone else.
It's tempting to claim the programme followed a neglected late masterpiece with an overplayed “look what I can do” 'prentice piece. But Shostakovich clearly deserved to graduate when he could write like this aged nineteen. His trademarks are already present, not least the stark juxtaposition of the quietly questing passages with outbursts of noisy exuberance. Sir Simon Rattle relished these transitions, so they startle even when you know the next flare-up is coming. He also had a splendid grip of very broad tempi, buttonholing the listener through a long stretch of the fine Lento, building the tension inexorably to its powerful climax. Amongst those Shostakovich trademarks are plentiful instrumental solos, and the conductor had Olivier Stankiewicz (oboe), Carmine Lauri (violin ) and Rebecca Gilliver (cello) take deserved bows. But he could have added Daniel Jemison (bassoon) and, of course in this work, Elizabeth Burley (piano), among others.