That the violinist Julian Rachlin could follow a knockout concerto performance with an encore as long, demanding and fabulously intense as Ysaÿe’s single-movement Sonata No 3, without skewing the balance of the rest of the concert, gives some indication of how powerful this programme was. This was an extraordinary evening from Rachlin, the London Philharmonic and Klaus Mäkelä, the 27-year-old Finn already lined up to be the Concertgebouw’s next chief conductor.
Shostakovich’s Violin Concerto No 1 is a long and gruelling play for a violinist but one that Rachlin seemed visibly to be enjoying even halfway through the finale. His deliberate, careful phrasing at the very beginning set the tone for a performance in which nothing was thrown away, not even in the most frenzied episodes, which Mäkelä drove hard and fast. In the long lines of the final movement Rachlin’s violin continued to sing out even as the orchestral sound swelled behind him; by the end he seemed unvanquishable.
Something invincible courses through Thomas Larcher’s Symphony No 2 as well: is it the sea, fear, or the will to live? This 2016 work, subtitled Kenotaph, is a searing commemoration of the thousands of refugees who had drowned in the Mediterranean. It’s a dazzling piece of writing that manages to evoke terror with its sounds of heavy sea swell and panic with its jangling tintinnabulations, but is also almost playful in its light-handed way with references and with timbre – a fleeting touch of Bach, a wheezy accordion, rasping percussion that seems periodically to leach the pitch from the rest of the orchestra. Its scope is Mahlerian, and it sounded like a masterpiece here, Mäkelä drawing a performance of huge assurance from the LPO.
Following the Larcher with the Adagio from Mahler’s 10th Symphony felt absolutely appropriate – and yet Mäkelä’s assertive approach, emphasising the angularity of its melodies, didn’t quite let it achieve transcendence. It was still moving, though, and the fact that even this piece could feel anticlimactic in context just speaks of the impact of what we had already heard.
