Tim Ashley 

Prom 56: LPO/Jurowski review – cosmic in scope and intention

Vladimir Jurowski made the most familiar of scores sound fresh, and Holst's The Planets was particularly exciting, writes Tim Ashley
  
  

Vladimir Jurowski
Exciting yet thoughtful … conductor Vladimir Jurowski. Photograph: Chris Christodoulou Photograph: Chris Christodoulou

The London Philharmonic's Prom with Vladimir Jurowski was nothing if not cosmic in scope and intention. The programme was structured around two early-20th-century works that aim to redefine spirituality in personal terms. The evening opened with Holst's The Planets, with its astrological survey of human experience, and closed with Scriabin's Prometheus: The Poem of Fire, which extravagantly envisions mankind's evolution from chaos to divine transcendence. In between them, Schoenberg's Five Orchestral Pieces, ushering in a new age of sound rather than spirit, seemed vaguely mundane in comparison.

The running order should perhaps have been reversed. Holst is a greater composer than Scriabin, and The Planets is a hard act to follow when done so well. This was Jurowski at his best, exciting yet thoughtful, and making this most familiar of scores sound marvellously fresh. A poised, multitextured Venus after the pulverising onslaught of Mars suggested the complexities of peace after the simplicities of war. The jubilation of Jupiter, hair-raising in its Dionysian elan, contrasted wonderfully with the controlled anguish of Saturn. The final fade to silence at the end of Neptune was breathtaking.

The Schoenberg had much of the same finesse and power: the third piece, with its shifting colours and harmonies, was particularly fine and beautiful. Prometheus, however, was less successful. Scriabin, who was synaesthetic, saw sound in terms of colour, and wanted what he called a colour organ to illuminate the auditorium during the work's performance. Using a lighting plot by Lucy Carter, this was a rare attempt to fulfil his ambitions. But watching the orchestra turn green, the promenaders turn red, and then realising that you yourself have gone bright yellow, doesn't help concentration on what is ultimately a nebulous score. Alexander Toradze was the unusually punchy piano soloist. The orchestral playing was exquisite.

 

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