Hearing a full orchestral concert in LSO St Luke’s as we emerge from lockdown is in itself an extraordinary experience. The London Symphony Orchestra and their conductor laureate Michael Tilson Thomas opted to open their latest programme there, prior to taking it to Snape Maltings in Suffolk. The players occupied the entirety of the Jerwood Hall stalls, while the socially distanced audience sat in the horseshoe-shaped balcony above them, and the sound – breathtakingly clear and at times thrillingly loud – was almost immersive in its immediacy. It was well nigh impossible not to feel swept away by it all at the end.
Tilson Thomas opened with Copland’s Our Town, a concert suite derived from the composer’s soundtrack for the 1940 film of Thornton Wilder’s play of the same name, which examines the nature of both transience and transcendence in its depiction of life in a small New Hampshire town at the turn of the 20th century. Drawing on New England hymns for its thematic material, it is music of timeless, haunting simplicity, its poignancy heightened by the quiet intensity of Tilson Thomas’s conducting and the richness of the LSO’s playing.
Shostakovich’s Second Piano Concerto followed, the exuberance of its opening a sharp contrast to Copland’s reflective nostalgia. Yuja Wang was the soloist, bringing devil-may-care glamour and dexterity to the outer movements and exquisite poise to the central Andante, among the most beautiful things Shostakovich ever wrote. The strings sounded lovely here, too, though elsewhere all was brilliance, wit and dazzling energy.
Often in his element in Tchaikovsky, Tilson Thomas closed the evening with the Second “Little Russian” Symphony, rooted in Ukrainian folk music, and the arguably the closest Tchaikovsky ever came to writing a nationalist work. Balancing grandeur with drive, his interpretation was at once exhilarating and superbly detailed, the playing wonderfully focused, particularly the all-important horn and bassoon solos at the start, the impertinent woodwind phrases in the March, and the whirling strings in the finale. Rip-roaring stuff, and hugely enjoyable.
